


The Dust and the Seed

by the1918



Series: Song of the Rolling Earth [2]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: A Fair Amount of Soil Science, Age Difference, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Anal Fingering, Anal Sex, Angst with a Happy Ending, Bucky Is 25, Captain America Steve Rogers/Modern Bucky Barnes, Constantly Broken Tractors, Daddy Kink, Depleted Topsoil, Dirt(y) Talk, Domestic, Fantasizing, Farmer Steve Rogers, Farmer Steve's Hot Takes, Guilt, Homelessness, Homophobic Parents (Off-Screen), Identity Porn, Implied/Referenced Abuse, Implied/Referenced Homophobia, Injury Recovery, M/M, Masturbation, Modern Bucky Barnes, Post-Avengers: Endgame (Movie), Protective Steve Rogers, Retired Steve Rogers, Rimming, Sexual Tension, Shrunkyclunks, Slow Burn, So much guilt, Steve is 40, Twink Bucky Barnes, Virgin bucky barnes, fantasies of:
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-09
Updated: 2021-01-23
Packaged: 2021-03-14 07:27:58
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 26,126
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28541784
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/the1918/pseuds/the1918
Summary: They’ve had one fight—(“Did just fine on my own, and I walked a lot, Steve. No one ever stopped.”“I should have stopped when I saw you. I don’t know if I would have.”“You did stop”“I didn’t stop, Ihityou.”“What? You think you were the first? Least you didn’t do it on purpose.”)—But it didn’t last long; nothing more than a fit of hot anger between them with its only basis in insecurities and what Steve is willing to identify as guilt. His only choice afterwards had been to go outside and disappear into chopping firewood for a winter that wouldn’t leave the horizon, lest he stay inside and rip apart the wooden furniture instead, burying his teeth in scar tissue.—The AU Farmer Daddy Steve and Bucky story.part:|one|t w o|three|four|five|
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes/Steve Rogers
Series: Song of the Rolling Earth [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2050335
Comments: 424
Kudos: 584





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to [ixalit](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ixalit) for beta and to Cera ([@ceratonia-siliqua](https://ceratonia-siliqua.tumblr.com/) or [Leopardtail](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Leopardtail) on Ao3) for additional sensitivity reading.
> 
>  **Playlist!:** the incredible [@lokis-fenris-wolf](https://lokis-fenris-wolf.tumblr.com/) made a [playlist](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/4s6MZf4FTmL2955X5Xhs5j?si=-CnKYIbFQjqLfluFo-upXA) [Spotify] for this story and fucking _nailed_ it. I cannot encourage you enough to listen to it while you read!

* * *

**b u c k y**

a u g u s t 1, 2 0 2 5

| 318 days until harvest |

Bucky stops, making sure everything is nice and spread out.

He has a small bag of flour, one of the many cartons of eggs from Steve’s refrigerator, a few sticks of butter, baking powder, and the salt grinder, all of them neatly set out across the kitchen counter.

What he doesn’t have is a plan.

He’d been looking through Steve’s pantry between breakfast and lunch, not because he was hungry—Steve made _way_ too much food at every meal to ever leave Bucky anything but stuffed—but because he had just wanted to do literally anything other than watch _Antiques Roadshow_ or read another damn listicle on the internet. He’d wanted to get up off the couch. After ending up in the kitchen and letting his eyes cruise the various pantry staples, Bucky had realized he had every primary ingredient necessary to bake… well.

Something.

“What are you doing—?”

“— _Ah!_ ”

Bucky’s heart jumps into his throat. It had been one thing when his brain was swamped with Vicodin right after his surgery, but now it’s been two weeks in this house and Bucky still hasn’t gotten used to Steve’s penchant for sneaking in through the mud room without Bucky ever hearing the sound of the door.

“Shit,” Bucky swears, trying his best to catch his breath. “How do you _do_ that?”

Instead of answering, Steve walks to the other side of the kitchen island and stops opposite Bucky. It’s just past ten in the morning, which means that his host has been working outside for the last three hours already. Steve smells like Earth and sweat. Bucky still can’t figure out exactly what he does out there every day; he never sees a tractor or any of the big machines he associates with farming. Mostly, Steve seems to be digging tiny holes and picking soil out of it. Sometimes Bucky thinks he’s massaging his ‘dead dirt’—even if he doesn’t quite know how dirt can die.

“I thought we agreed you didn’t need to worry about making food?”

Bucky stops himself just short of rolling his eyes, opting instead to look Steve over.

One thing he _does_ know Steve gets up to outside is covering himself in all that dead dirt, and Bucky would be lying if he said it wasn’t a damn sight. He’s been attracted to the big, beefy football players rolling in grass on the television since before he was even willing to admit the attraction existed, but Bucky never thought he’d find himself going a little breathless over the look of a man like Steve when he comes in from the barn or the field—pure, unabated testosterone.

Bucky bites his lip.

The dusky brown dirt catches in the perspiration on his arms and gets caught up in the dark blond hair there whenever Steve’s been outside. The subtle gray hairs in his beard—which Bucky only ever noticed because of all that time he’d spent staring while Steve dutifully replaced the gauze on his arms before the shoulder gash healed—become shaded in with the color of silt. The collar and underarms of his shirt get darker where the moisture of heat has pooled, forming lines that speak of hard work and exertion. Bucky even finds himself a little fixated by the bit of Earth that sticks under Steve’s fingernails after he takes his work gloves off. Maybe he wouldn’t find that so… so _interesting_ if it weren’t for the multitude of nail brushes he sees scattered around at each sink in the house, all of them heavily used after Steve’s work is over and before making their meals (because if Bucky is intrigued by a man who isn’t afraid to stick his hands in the dirt, Steve apparently isn’t).

Steve turns around to scrub his hands at the sink as he waits for an answer. Bucky wonders if Steve had seen him gawking. He lets out a tired breath and leans against the countertop with the one arm that isn’t stuck in a sling.

“Look, Steve… you know I appreciate you letting me stay—”

“—And _you_ know not to thank me for that—”

“—I’m not! Not right now. It’s just that since I’ve stopped taking the painkillers, I feel like I have all this energy, and I’m going to go crazy if I don’t have something to, just, like… _do_ around here.”

It’s a little bit of a lie; it’s been two weeks of him staying on Steve’s farm and Bucky is _already_ going fucking crazy with boredom. Having a brooding, undeniably attractive man waiting on him hand and foot had been a dream for maybe the first week—even if Steve tended to be awkward as hell around him, especially first thing in the morning and right before bed. But the reality is that Bucky has gone from spending eighteen hours a day trying to figure out where he was going to sleep that night, or where his next meal would be coming from, to staring at Steve’s stripy pink wallpaper every minute he’s not just napping.

It’s been an adjustment, to say the least. Bucky’s not sure he’s dealing with it well.

Steve finishes his washing up and grabs a towel to dry his hands. With the dirt gone, Bucky can see the bizarre scarring that covers Steve’s right forearm and disappears beneath the sleeve rolled up to his elbow. It’s ‘bizarre’ because Bucky’s not sure it’s even really scarring; there are no raised pink lines, no evidence of an old skin break, just a peculiar network of red lines that look like a million and one burst blood vessels. He sets the towel down and turns to Bucky.

“I had hoped the laptop would give you something to focus on,” he says. “I thought kids these days were all about the internet.”

Ugh. There Steve goes again, acting like he’s old enough to be someone’s great grandfather.

Bucky knows that Steve is forty, and to be honest, Steve _looks_ forty—maybe not in the lines of his body, but in the lines of his face. But forty isn’t seventy, and it isn’t sixty, and it isn’t even fifty; by all accounts, Steve would be considered a millennial at his age. And Bucky’s not a ‘kid,’ even if Steve sometimes calls him that. Truthfully, Bucky can never decide if he’s annoyed by the term or not.

He knows Steve doesn’t think he’s actually a kid and that it’s just a nickname, but sometimes Bucky feels like he might as well be a kid when he’s standing next to Steve, probably eight inches shorter at his measly five-foot-six. Not to mention that fact that Bucky is completely dependent on him for his every need right now.

“The laptop has been great. I’m really thankful for that. See—I, uh, I found this recipe online? You know…” Bucky gives Steve a crooked grin and hopes it looks more cute than dorky. “On the ‘internet?’”

Steve glares at the slight bit of sass, but there’s no weight behind it. Bucky has come to learn that Steve Grant isn’t really as much of a hard, lifeless boulder as he makes himself out to be.

Bucky gestures to the open recipe page on his laptop where it’s sitting on the kitchen counter. It’s not actually _his_ laptop—Bucky doesn’t have so much as a flip phone to his name—but Steve had more or less given it to him just two days after he came to stay. Bucky had been sitting on the couch in the late afternoon, staring hollowly at some sort of public programming on the television, when Steve had walked in carrying a really intense-looking computer (Bucky thinks it’s got a field case on it?). He’d said it was an old laptop that he didn’t use anymore, but Bucky didn’t know how ‘old’ it really was; the model couldn’t have come out more than two or three years ago.

At the time, Bucky had been too drugged up to protest the kindness, but now he’s glad he didn’t. The computer and the high-speed internet that Steve surprisingly has hooked up in his house have proved to be a much-needed source of entertainment over the previous two weeks.

“It’s just—it’s like I said,” Bucky goes on. “I have all this spare energy now. I need to use it somewhere. Please just let me cook for us—sometimes, at least?”

The truth is that Bucky really likes cooking. His mother was—is, whatever—the best cook in Shelbyville, and even though Becca always hated getting dragged into the kitchen to help her, Bucky loved it. He would watch Mom work her craft anytime he could… at least when his Pops didn’t have more ‘manly’ tasks for him.

He likes it because it makes him use both sides of his brain. Bucky loves the feeling of methodically working through a new recipe, measuring out each ingredient with care and attention before combining it all together in just the right order. If he follows the recipe well, then the next time he might try to experiment, adding his own spin to it. Bucky doesn’t mind if that means he messes it up on occasion; if he adds a whole tablespoon of cornstarch instead of only half and his sauce turns out too thick, that’s how he learns just how far one tablespoon of cornstarch goes. It’s the same reason he’s always wanted to study engineering whenever he finally gets into college—a big college, a _real_ university—even if that seems like more and more of a long shot with every day that goes by.

“You’ve only got the one arm right now,” Steve argues. “You could injure yourself.”

Bucky tries his best to make his eyes big and wide, cocking his head and attempting an effect.

“What if I promise to be careful?”

Steve sighs, exasperated, but he doesn’t respond. He rests both of his hands on the edge of the countertop and hangs his head between his shoulders. He looks like he’s either trying to catch his breath or think very hard for a way to get out of this conversation.

Bucky can see that the tips of Steve’s hair are damp with sweat where they curl beneath his ear. He imagines getting out a dish towel and moving in close, sponging the moisture out for him.

“Look…” Steve finally says, raising his head. “Do you want to go into town with me later? Get out of the house?”

And now it’s Bucky’s turn to go quiet. It’s probably the third or fourth time Steve has invited him to come along to one of his trips to either Elizabethtown or Columbus since Bucky has come to stay with him, but he’s yet to take Steve up on it.

“Maybe,” he answers. He fiddles with the open lip on the bag of flour. Bucky’s not looking at Steve, so he can’t see his expression. “I don’t know.”

They share a silence for a while. Bucky can’t decide which of them is thinking louder.

“Hey,” Steve says, breaking the quiet, and there’s something in his voice that’s commanding yet soft at the same time. He’s not touching Bucky, but his words feel like a gentle hand sliding beneath his chin to tip it upwards. “You know I’m not going to take you somewhere and toss you out on the side of the road, right?”

Bucky can’t help but follow the touch that isn’t there. He lifts his chin.

“Yeah. I know,” Bucky says, and he does. “It’s just…”

But he doesn’t want to end that sentence, and he’s a little mad at himself for starting it at all.

He isn’t scared of Steve, per se; Bucky had been intimidated by his large frame the first time he saw him in the emergency room—and if not for the morphine, he might have been shaking through the holes in his shoes—but it’s different now that Bucky finds himself spending more and more time around Steve and actually starting to feel something like… like _safe_. But that doesn’t mean he’s not still wary of leaving the bubble of Steve’s farm now that he’s finally found a moment of security; a moment to breathe. He rarely even leaves the house.

Bucky has been on his own for some time, and if he’s only learned one lesson in that time, it’s on the subject of trust. The universe hadn’t really given him the luxury of choice when Steve had offered him his help and a place to stay; the only two options had been going the rest of his life with the use of his arm or without it.

“It’s okay,” Steve says, and this time he does reach across the countertop, using one of his broad hands to cover Bucky’s. He looks wary but stoic about his own gesture, like maybe he thinks Bucky might pull away, but Bucky is surprised to find the touch as comforting as he thinks Steve means it to be. “You don’t have to come with me. You can stay here. But if you do want to come, you need to know that I’m not coming home without you.”

It’s a heavy moment, and Steve’s hand is even heavier. Bucky looks down. The dirt that was on Steve’s arm has been scrubbed away all the way up to his elbow. Bucky can see the interesting line below Steve’s bicep delineating light bronze from the taupe and the grime of the field.

Maybe this mysterious farmer who calls himself Steve Grant isn’t the worst person Bucky could place his trust in right now.

“I—I want to come with you,” Bucky eventually manages. “You’re right. I should get out of the house.”

The corner of Steve’s mouth ticks up. He may be as stiff as a board around Bucky in the early mornings, but once he loosens up, Steve has been getting closer and closer each afternoon to giving him something like a smile. This is the closest he’s gotten yet.

He gives the back of Bucky’s hand an awkward pat, then steps away.

“Glad to have you along. We’ll leave around two o’clock.”

Bucky nods. A funny part of him misses Steve’s hand already. It’s stupid.

Steve turns to leave the kitchen, but a little itch in the back of Bucky’s brain amplifies and makes his mouth open.

“Hey, Steve?” Bucky says before he can leave. “Do you like scones?” He turns the laptop towards Steve and scrolls up so he can read the title of the recipe. “I was thinking of learning to make scones.”

Steve turns and glances at the screen. He reads it, and then he gives him a half-grin—even _more_ of a smile—and his expression seems to say, _‘Alright, kid.’_

Bucky smiles back, which always seems to make Steve do this funny thing with his face in return.

“Yeah, Buck,” Steve answers. He’s never used that nickname before. Bucky thinks he might like hearing it too much. “I like scones. Got everything on hand to make them?”

Bucky stares back for a moment, baffled that Steve is asking. He looks down over the recipe again.

“Um, no. Almost.”

“Better make yourself a list.”

And then Steve leaves the room. As confused as Bucky is, he also knows that’s the closest thing to winning an argument he’s ever going to get in this house.

—

The sun really isn’t fucking around up there.

Rays of heat beat down against the top of Bucky’s head, harsh and unforgiving. Steve—who seems to have a suspiciously endless amount of money for a failing farmer, or maybe he’s just terrible at managing what he has—thankfully runs his air conditioning on high twenty-four-seven. Even after wandering asphalt roads for six months, the perfectly chilled environment inside the house sometimes makes Bucky forget just how brutal the mid-drought summer heat can be.

Scanning the dead field in front of him, he spots Steve about a hundred yards away. Bucky walks his way, and he tries not to get his nice new trainers dirty as he skirts the edge of the cropland, but the shoes are white. They’re covered in a reddish-brown color in seconds. _Que sera, sera.._

“Steve!” Bucky calls as he draws near. He doesn’t want to startle the guy by approaching from behind unannounced—not when he’s that big and burly.

Steve stands quickly from his crouched position. He’s been staring at the ground, fixated on something Bucky is sure must be cool and exciting and important.

“Buck,” Steve greets when he turns. His eyebrows are knitted together, but Bucky doesn’t know if it’s from worry or from squinting at the sun. “What’s wrong?”

The nickname makes Bucky blush, but the question makes him laugh. Maybe he does need to leave the house more if Steve assumes something has gone awry the second he sees him outside.

He can’t help but take a minute to look Steve over as he gets close—not that he ever can. He’s got that soft brown dirt, that _dust_ , embedded in the creases of his knuckles and outlining the veins on the backs of his hands. It clings to his sweat. He has a long, skinny shovel that he’s apparently just used to dig what looks like a very shallow hole, and he’s holding a worn-looking book in his sizable hands. It’s a paperback, clearly published by an old-school printing press.

Bucky cocks his head sideways to read the cover.

_Soil Survey: Bartholomew County, Indiana_

_United States Department of Agriculture_

_July 1947_

“Oh, um, nothing’s wrong,” he answers. He lifts his head. “Just needed your help to open this.”

Steve peers down at what Bucky is holding out to him: a jar of blackberry jam. His shoulders sag minutely with relief.

Along with turbinado sugar, the jam had been one of only two things on the list of missing ingredients for his selected scone recipe. Bucky had wanted to dive right into his baking project as soon as they’d returned from their trip the day prior, but he’d made himself wait for an occasion when he was really, truly bored. Today’s episode of _Antiques Roadshow_ had brought such an occasion.

Too bad one-armed baking was turning out to be more of a challenge than Bucky had anticipated.

“Sure,” Steve says. “Just a second.”

He sets the paperback face-down on the ground, open to preserve his place, and he doffs his thick, dirt-covered gloves. He wipes the sweat from his hands on the cleanest foot of fabric he seems to be able to find on his plaid shirt and takes the jar.

“What are you reading?” Bucky asks. He bends down to pick up Steve’s book as soon as the jam is out of his hand, and although Steve has the lid loose in about half of one second, Bucky’s interest is piqued enough to give the marked page a scan.

**_Fox loam._ ** _This is the dominant soil of the gravel plains of terrace lands found throughout the broad valleys of Flatrock Creek and the Driftwood and East Fork White Rivers. It is the principal soil of the wide gravel terraces extending northward from Columbus…_

“It’s a soil survey,” Steve answers. His voice brings Bucky’s focus out of the page. “The first one ever done for this county, actually.”

Bucky raises his eyes. The bronzed skin on Steve’s sun-soaked face is glowing with sweat, and it’s just a little paler at the edges where his uncovered cheeks meet his thick beard.

“They surveyed your farm?” he asks.

“In a way. They surveyed this whole country between the Wars.” Bucky infers from the date on the cover that Steve means the First and Second World Wars. “The U.S. government wanted to study the soil.”

Bucky looks back down at the book and notices the fold-out map. He opens it, recognizing the boundaries and roads of the county, and his eyes follow all the funny shapes and lines with little symbols in the middle of each one.

“Why did they do that?” he asks, raising his eyes to Steve’s sun-kissed face.

“They wanted to know where it was being eroded, depleted. And to learn how to stop it.”

The rays of light cast down from the cloudless, blue sky feel like they’re growing hotter and sharper the longer Bucky stands there. Steve is looking at him, squinting through the brightness, and Bucky almost feels like he’s being studied. He doesn’t mind it so much.

Bucky looks back down at the page.

_…Because of the flat relief and the well-drained, productive soil, nearly all of this land is now used for crops—_

“—They teach you about the Depression in school?” Steve asks suddenly.

Bucky shoots Steve a confused look.

“Like… The _Great_ Depression? I mean, yeah,” he shrugs. “The economy was really bad in the thirties.”

Steve nods, but there’s something almost rueful in his smile, like he sees an ironic humor in Bucky’s answer.

“That’s about right,” Steve says. “They teach you about the Dust Bowl, too?”

Bucky takes a second or two to think. The ‘Dust Bowl’... It sounds like it might be familiar, but Bucky can’t place it. Steve picks up on his lack of response.

“The Dust Bowl went hand-in-hand with the Depression,” he explains. Bucky doesn’t stop him to ask about the point of this impromptu history lesson, because Steve has a nice voice, and what else is he doing today besides experimenting with scones? “People today know that half of this country went jobless and hungry because of the economy. Most of them either don’t know or have forgotten that there was another disaster going on in the Midwest at the same time, that it destroyed lives all over.”

Steve leans down and plucks up a dead stalk of millet from the ground. The little grains on the end disintegrate in his hands like the hollow kernels that they are, husks of seeds barely clinging to parched straw.

“This country doubled its harvests in the early part of the twentieth century,” Steve continues. “Government response to a global food shortage. They tried tapping resources no one had ever looked twice at before. In some places south of here, they ploughed and tilled on land that had never been cultivated—ground that normally wouldn’t be any good for things like food crops, except in wet years _._ They changed the landscape completely.” Steve digs the toe of his boot into the ground in front of him, breaking it apart with barely any force, quickly building a tiny pile. “But tilling dirt loosens it up. It makes it weaker. You ask too much of the soil and you don’t take care of it, then all you need is a strong wind to come along and… well.”

Steve kicks at the pile, and a light breeze comes through as if on cue, carrying it down the field.

It’s a strangely eerie sight. A shudder runs down the length of Bucky’s spine as Steve continues.

“The whole middle of the country—even up here where we are—got hit by half a dozen different droughts during the Depression. It was worse than anyone had ever seen; some states had as much as half their crops fail. But down in the High Plains, where they had been lifting up the whole top foot of dirt to get fields capable of growing wheat and corn, the drought and the soil damage were so bad that dust storms came along and carried the dirt right off the ground.”

Bucky’s eyes flit back to Steve’s face and see him staring across the expanse of his dead crops as he speaks. It’s not an empty staring, but it’s more than just contemplative.

“Tens of thousands of farmers who hadn’t lost their jobs to the Depression lost them to the Dust Bowl,” Steve goes on. “And it affected people in the cities, too. Some of the farmers that couldn’t grow anything had to depend on their livestock for cash, so they started slaughtering all their pigs to drive pork supply down and prices up. Families all over the place that already couldn’t afford to eat went even hungrier.”

And then Bucky suddenly realizes why the look on Steve’s face is so interesting. He's talking about these hundred-year-old events like they’re something out of a memory, not a textbook.

What a strange guy.

“Roosevelt’s people started a government program to study the soil, or what was left of it. They called it the Soil Conservation Service.” Steve finally tears his eyes from his land, reaching over and holding the page with one finger while he flips the book, tapping the logo on the back cover: ‘S.C.S.’ “And they published these surveys. They still update them every few decades.”

Bucky opens back to the bookmarked page and takes another look at the fold-out map behind it. He thinks he recognizes some of the street intersections around Steve’s farm, and he can see the label over the area: _Fl_.

“So that’s the kind of soil you have here?” Bucky asks. “Fox soil?”

“Fox loam, at least where we’re standing. There are actually a dozen different kinds across this field—all similar—but that seems to be the primary soil here.”

Bucky reads further down the page, working his way through the dry language.

_…the 10-inch surface soil of Fox loam is brown to slightly dark brown and is strong brown in most cultivated fields. The organic matter content…_

Bucky scrunches his eyebrows together and looks down at the ground. The soil beneath their feet isn’t a “strong dark brown” at all, just… regular brown—almost light brown. It might even be yellow in some spots.

“Are you sure this is the right one?” Bucky questions. “It doesn’t look like what it says in the book. If this has been farmed a lot, then it says Fox loam should be dark brown.”

The hot summer rays suddenly aren’t beating down on Bucky as hard. He looks up, and at first, he sees nothing but sky, sky, sky until the blue is in Steve’s eyes instead—because Steve has come close enough to block out the sun. He’s peering down at Bucky, or maybe he’s just looking at the book.

That scorching sky above them is vast, and it makes Bucky feel sort of small. At least Steve is big above him.

“No, it’s right,” Steve answers. “See this here, where it talks about the subsoil?”

Steve leans even closer, enough for Bucky to be able to pick up the smell of his sweat. It’s not unpleasant; the heat seems to amplify the natural scent of… of _Steve_ , that same smell that Bucky discovered inside the collar of the button-up shirt Steve had lent him his first night staying in his house.

He looks at the spot on the page where Steve’s finger is pointing.

_…The upper subsoil layer is a dull, yellowish brown that becomes stronger brown with depth. From a depth of 18 inches to the parent material, the subsoil…_

“Oh,” Bucky mumbles. “So this is more like the, um. The subsoil?”

“That’s right. Almost all of the topsoil has been eroded here—most, but not all. I’m trying to restore what I can.”

“How much time does that take?”

“More than a lifetime,” Steve answers. “More than I’ve got.”

The words land strangely in Bucky’s ears. For as much as Steve’s face says he’s forty years old, something about the rest of him always seems almost ageless.

“But if the Dust Bowl and all of that was all the way back in the thirties, and people learned more about conserving the soil after that, shouldn’t it have recovered by now?”

“It wasn’t the Dust Bowl that dragged up my soil,” Steve says. “Farmers in Indiana were more experienced than the farmers in the Plains, so they fared better in all of that. My neighbors’ plots are perfectly healthy today.” Steve points in the direction of the fence line. “It was the people that used to own my farm that did this damage. Probably only took them twenty years to do it with the kinds of practices they used.”

“What do you mean?”

“They tilled and planted corn year after year after year, and then they left their fields bare in the off-season. And it’s not just the erosion.” Steve picks up another stalk of millet, grabbing it further down to pull up the roots with it. They look frail; thin. “All that hungry corn sucked the nutrients right out of this soil, so it’s more than eroded. It’s starved.”

They stand there for a minute, both of them looking down at the failure of a crop in Steve’s hand. Bucky can feel the body heat coming off of Steve, but for some reason he doesn’t mind it like he does the blazing-hot sun. It feels nice to be close to a person.

Eventually Steve does step away. Bucky feels pretty proud of himself for hiding the slight disappointment.

“I looked up stuff about millet,” Bucky says, suddenly recalling the Wikipedia hole he’d fallen down the other day in between old _Downton Abbey_ reruns. “It said it grows really quick, that you can plant it at the beginning of the summer.”

Steve looks at him curiously.

“Yes,” he responds. “It does.”

“So what were you growing before that?”

Steve laughs and gives Bucky a thin smile— _so_ close to something real—and tosses the dead stalk on the ground.

“Forty acres of dead winter wheat.”

“Oh,” Bucky says. He glances back down at the yellow-brown dirt before looking back at Steve. “And it died because of the soil?”

Steve nods. “It did. That and the drought. Tried it two years in a row, and that’s how I found out just how depleted my ground really is. Switched to cover crop only.”

Bucky spends a minute piecing together all the little bits of new information. Steve had just said that it takes more than a lifetime for soil to rebuild itself, so if the wheat died, he doesn’t understand how the millet was ever supposed to work out.

“But if it takes so long to fix the soil, how do you ever plan on growing anything?”

“By putting more into the soil than I take out,” Steve answers. “And by using no-till practices.”

“‘No-till?’” Bucky repeats. He’s never heard of that. “You can grow things without tilling?”

“Sure can,” Steve answers with a nod. He looks Bucky in the eyes. “Or at least, I can keep trying.”

They stare at each other for a while, nothing but silence in their ears save for the occasional sound of doves cooing as they feast on the fallen field of millet, but it’s not awkward. It might be charged; Bucky’s not sure, he just knows Steve’s eyes don’t stay completely on his face. They had just been talking about dirt for the past ten or fifteen minutes, so Bucky can’t quite figure out why the green-speckled blue of Steve’s eyes is painted electric with something like guilt all of a sudden.

And then Steve breaks their shared gaze, collecting the book from Bucky and replacing it with the loosened jar. He kneels down back to his little hole in the ground. Bucky takes that as his cue to return to his scones.

He makes it about ten feet away when a thought suddenly pops into his head. He knows Steve has only been at this farming business for two years now, but Bucky doesn’t know what he did before that.

“Steve?” he calls, turning back.

Steve doesn’t stand up this time, but does look up, scanning the length of Bucky’s body as though by habit. A little bead of sweat travels from his upper hairline down the hard edges of his face when he turns his head, and it almost looks like the summer heat is caressing Steve’s skin.

“Yeah, Buck?”

A sweaty tendril of hair falls across Steve’s forehead and he squints up.

“How do you know all that stuff about the Dust Bowl?” Bucky asks. “Did you learn it in school?”

Steve doesn’t answer right away, licking his lips. It seems like a weirdly long time to be thinking about the answer to what Bucky thinks is an easy question. Maybe Steve just doesn’t remember where he learned about it.

“Yes.”

And that’s it. Steve puts on his work gloves and goes back to palming around in his dirt, and Bucky turns back to the house with more on his mind than he ever imagined himself having that day.

He’s going to make scones, and then later he’s going to make pasta for their dinner—extra for Steve—and then he’s going to open a new browser tab and look up “no-till wheat.”

And then he’s going to lie down on his bed in Steve’s guest room and close his eyes, thinking about that little bead of sweat.

* * *

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Soil Survey: Bartholomew County, Indiana, Issued July 1947](https://www.nrcs.usda.gov/Internet/FSE_MANUSCRIPTS/indiana/bartholomewIN1947/bartholomewIN1947.pdf).
> 
> Friendly reminder that your author here is a soil scientist, not a farmer 😅


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bucky has questions.

* * *

**s t e v e**

a u g u s t 9, 2 0 2 5

| 310 days until harvest |

It’s getting easier, Steve thinks.

Not the thoughts; not the fantasies. It’s no easier to resist the images that fill his mind of him putting his hands on Bucky, complicating Bucky, than it had been the first day Bucky arrived at his house. It’s no easier to watch the young man sitting on his couch, staring at a screen—perhaps the television, perhaps the laptop—too captivated or lost in thought to notice that he’s licking his own parted lips. It’s no easier for Steve to walk into the kitchen and find Bucky hard at work making a pitcher of cold iced tea, more for Steve than for himself, and watch as Bucky uses his tongue to swipe away the sugar crystals caught on his knuckle.

It’s definitely not easier for Steve to keep his hand off his own cock at night; he gave up on that three days in. It never gets easier to meet Bucky’s eyes in the morning.

But the resistance is getting easier. It no longer feels like torture to be near Bucky without being able to settle anything but a friendly touch on his skin, and Steve avoids even those touches as much as he can. It’s no longer a visceral pain to stand beside Bucky and look down their eight-inch difference in height, knowing that he’s not allowed to pick him up and push his body into the nearest wall. It’s no longer a squeeze to his throat to see Bucky staring at the width of Steve’s muscles while pressing teeth into his bottom lip and still manage to keep himself from sliding fingers into that sweet mouth, to warn, _‘Don’t, baby boy. That’s mine for biting on.’_

Maybe it’s that he’s so practiced now. Maybe Bucky is just becoming less irresistible now that he isn’t as mysterious. It’s still a struggle in his blood either way, but at least Steve is getting by on the relief of his hand and the willpower he can harness.

Bucky has been staying with Steve for almost a month now.

Steve has learned some things about him.

He’s a curious guy, for one.

—

They’re sitting on the couch after dinner one evening, half-watching the local news, when Bucky first asks one of his questions.

Steve is in the middle of taking a sip of his beer—maybe he can’t drink the easiness from it, but he can still enjoy the taste—and Bucky speaks up from his perch on the armchair he seems to prefer. His laptop is open.

“How deep do you drill your seed?”

Steve’s cough is loud and wet as the taste of red ale goes down the wrong side of his throat.

“Um,” he sputters when his hacking subsides. He can feel the heat in his own cheeks. “I’m not…”

“Your crops,” Bucky repeats like it’s obvious, and _oh_ —perhaps it should have been. “I’ve been looking some stuff up on Google. You said you don’t till, which I learned means you must use a seed drill to plant. Right?”

The liquid still stings Steve’s windpipe as he listens, eventually nodding. He can’t help but take notice of the subtle bit of pride Bucky exudes over knowing something about Steve’s farming approach, even if Steve has no idea why he’s been looking it up to begin with.

“That’s right,” Steve confirms. “For the wheat, I drill two inches. For the millet this year, I drilled one inch.”

Bucky visibly contemplates Steve’s answer. His lips are wet and red with his damn licking again, barely parted. He looks down at his screen and scans over something with little flits of his eyes.

“But couldn’t you go down to three inches for the wheat? Because your soil is silt loam?” He raises his head. “It would grow better if it were deeper, since your topsoil is so loose.”

Steve stares back, bewildered.

“What is all this?” he asks, and he’s surprised to hear it sound like an actual chuckle.

Bucky blushes, his expression sheepish when he shrugs.

“I don’t know,” he mumbles in answer. “All those things you were saying last week about your soil and the erosion and stuff… it seemed interesting. I thought I’d learn more about it.” He stops, shaking his head and worrying his lip, and then he looks back at the computer screen with a ‘click’ of the touchpad. Steve suspects it’s the click of him closing out a browser window. “Just bored again, I guess. You can ignore—”

“No,” Steve interrupts. “I’m sorry. It’s good that you’re interested. I was just wondering where it was coming from.” He’s kicking himself for his discouraging reaction, unintentional as it had been. “I’m happy to tell you anything you want to know about it.”

Steve shifts in his spot on the couch. Bucky’s blush settles at the reassurances, and he tilts his head and listens when Steve picks up the topic again.

“I could… I could drill deeper, yeah.” He keeps his expression carefully neutral. “But germination would be more difficult since there’s less moisture at that depth. If we weren’t in a drought and all I had to be concerned with was the erosion, then I would go three inches.”

“Oh.” Bucky releases the lip from between his teeth. He’s quiet for a moment while he reads over something else. “When do you plant the wheat?”

Steve almost asks him what it is he’s looking at online, but he decides against it. He’s just thankful that Bucky wants to converse about something that is—accidental innuendos aside—safe from Steve’s more dangerous lines of thought.

“I grow soft red as winter wheat,” he answers. “I plant it in late September. That gives it enough time to establish and grow in the fall before the snow starts to fall. The plants go dormant until the spring.”

“Really?” Surprise colors Bucky’s tone. “How come the snow doesn’t make it freeze to death?”

“The winter wheat is cold hardy. Snow blankets the field until springtime, and that insulates the plants from even colder temperatures on the surface. It also puts moisture back into the soil each time the snow melts a little.”

Bucky raises his eyebrows. Steve’s chest inexplicably tightens at the sight of such genuine intrigue.

“So what happens when winter is over?”

“Well,” Steve says, “the way it _should_ happen is that the snow melts in the spring and the wheat wakes from its dormancy. It gets nice and green if it's healthy, and then it’s golden by the June harvest.” He waves the hand holding the beer in a bit of sarcastic gesture and takes another sip. “‘Amber waves of grain,’ and whatnot.”

His stomach joins his chest in constriction when the stupid reference makes Bucky laugh, because a laughing Bucky always breaks into a toothy smile, creases forming at the corners of his bright eyes. He settles back into scrolling his screen when the giggling subsides.

“But that didn’t happen for you?” he asks. “You said ‘should.’”

Steve sighs. “No, it didn’t. Both years I’ve planted, the crop winter-killed.”

“Why?” Bucky’s eyebrows knit together. “I thought the snow was supposed to help keep it alive?”

“It does—if the plant has matured enough before the snow falls. My wheat couldn’t get enough nutrients or root depth to stay alive in the cold.”

Bucky’s face falls, but Steve can’t help but find even that expression endearing. They’re talking about cereal crops and Bucky looks like he’s just received the saddest news.

“Oh.”

It’s one word, and it’s all Bucky says before he leans forward and grabs his own beer from the coffee table, long fingers wrapping around the neck as he grasps the bottle. Steve watches him draw in a thoughtful swallow. Bucky’s throat bobs beneath the soft-looking skin of his neck.

And then he sets the bottle down and disappears back into his laptop. Steve doesn’t stare while Bucky starts typing something furiously into a search bar. He tells himself to go back to his beer and his news.

It’s not easy, but it’s easy enough.

—

Bucky is also stubborn.

Steve was honestly glad to learn it; he’d been afraid at first that he would do whatever Steve asked of him without question. And the kid—the man—is smart while he’s at it. He ducks his head when he wants to, but he swings for the fences when he doesn’t.

Perhaps what Bucky is most stubborn about is being overly hard on himself and not asking for help. He’s got the use of one arm and two legs and he’s clearly glad to have them. Steve will walk into a room and find Bucky trying to balance something that shouldn't be carried with only one arm, and he’ll swear under his breath as he rushes to help, but Bucky will always avoid him at first. It takes Steve staring him down with his best disapproving look for Bucky to give in and allow the assistance. Steve makes a point not to think too hard about what else that look could get him if he were vile enough to try and find out.

They’ve had one fight—

(“Did just fine on my own, and I walked a _lot_ , Steve. No one ever stopped.”

“I should have stopped when I saw you. I don’t know if I would have.”

“You did stop.”

“I didn’t stop, I _hit_ you.”

“What? You think you were the first? Least you didn’t do it on purpose.”)

—But it didn’t last long; nothing more than a fit of hot anger between them with its only basis in insecurities and what Steve is willing to identify as guilt. His only choice afterwards had been to go outside and disappear into chopping firewood for a winter that wouldn’t leave the horizon, lest he stay inside and rip apart the wooden furniture instead, burying his teeth in scar tissue.

—

Bucky’s _sharp_.

“How do you irrigate your field?”

Steve looks up from his breakfast of half a dozen eggs and even more slabs of various kinds of pork. It’s seven o’clock in the morning, but Bucky’s laptop is already open.

“Center pivot,” Steve answers, keeping his mouth closed as best he can while chewing the end of his bacon. He stops there without further explanation of the technical term, curious if Bucky might already know what it means.

Bucky doesn’t disappoint.

“Where are all the drive towers?” he asks. “The spans? I haven’t seen anything.”

“Disassembled; put away. Dead crops don't need water.”

“Oh,” Bucky’s mouth curls in a shy, half-smile, like he thinks he should have assumed as much. “That makes sense.”

Steve smirks to himself and cuts into a bright orange yolk with the edge of his fork.

—

He has an eye for detail. Steve first noticed it while watching Bucky bake.

Well, he doesn’t _watch_ , exactly; Steve will just sit at the kitchen table with order forms for equipment parts, maybe a book, while Bucky busies himself over any number of confections: scones, pies, muffins. His latest favorite seems to be lemon meringue pie. Steve can’t come close to regretting his choice to purchase a brand-new stand mixer and pass it off to Bucky as something he’s owned for years.

Bucky hums when he bakes. Steve rarely—if ever—can identify the tune, but he keeps finding himself pausing over whatever he’s reading to absorb the sound of that syrupy tenor. At his worst moments, Steve might let his eyes slide closed.

But sometimes Steve manages to focus past the easy melodies to watch Bucky work in the corner of his vision. He’s the definition of precise; he measures out each cup of sugar carefully, flattening the heaped top with the edge of a butter knife so that not even one extra teaspoon makes its way in before he mixes it into his concoction slowly. He puts a test batch of cookies in Steve’s oven to judge if one side heats hotter than the other. Steve has even seen him weigh out the batter when he pours layers for a cake.

It’s not just the baking. Bucky is meticulous and organized anywhere he takes an interest in something. Steve spots an open notebook on the countertop one evening—Bucky has apparently located Steve’s drawer of orphaned, unsorted junk—and he can’t help but give it a glance. There are rows and columns filled with information on different kinds of pesticides and herbicides and their characteristics. Some rows are denoted with an asterisk, and Steve recognizes them as products he has stored in the shed. There are hand-drawn figures of crop cycles that Bucky must have copied from the internet, and even a detailed rendering of a map of Steve’s field. A neatly divided-off corner of the page shows some sort of shorthand calculations.

Steve remembers from the first conversation they ever shared that Bucky was once a student. He didn’t know the background behind why or when that stopped being true, but Steve assumes it had a lot to do with his father disowning him and putting him on the streets. He wonders what Bucky studied, if it was some sort of field in science or mathematics, and if he would return if given the choice.

Bucky is intelligent, and he takes pride in his craft.

It sticks with Steve.

—

For as smart as he is, he’s quicker to learn. To adapt.

“What kind of fertilizer do you use?”

And it’s back, not that it’s ever left since Bucky showed up with it: a curiosity that feels like it’s coming from an irrationally pure place.

But Steve has been preparing himself.

“I use a combination of organic and mineral fertilizers,” he answers, eyes on the bolt he’s trying to fasten on his tractor wheel. “I try to only apply mineral once before I plant, and then I switch to organic sources during the growing season.”

When he does look over, he finds Bucky working through the information in his mind. He’s got that damn notepad out on the workbench.

“So your crops aren’t all organic, then.”

Steve laughs and turns back to his finicky bolt. “I guess not.”

“I thought organic was supposed to be healthier for you?”

“There’s no science to that.” Steve pops off the socket of his torque wrench and grabs a size up. “It’s mostly become an advertising scheme, although it is better for the environment. Too much fertilizer of any kind can run off into water and impact the chemistry there. That’s typically worse with mineral—that’s inorganic—because the nutrients are more concentrated in synthetic fertilizers. And some kinds of pesticides can mess with the ecosystem.”

“Why do people say organic is better then?” Bucky asks.

“It’s really just a label; a stamp. All it means is that you didn’t use anything synthetic—fertilizer, pesticides, GMOs—to grow your crops. Doesn’t mean your product is any better for anyone, or even for the environment.”

“Wait,” Bucky says, stepping away from his notepad. “GMOs? Those are really bad, right?”

“Stop reading _Mother Jones_ , Buck.”

“I,” Bucky sighs, and Steve knows that if he were to look up, he would see him rolling his eyes. “Okay, but those are plants that were made in the lab, right? Like… they’re not natural. They’re science experiments.”

The hairs on Steve’s arms stick up like someone has rubbed a static-charged balloon over his skin. He doesn’t let his movements falter as he clicks the five-eighths hex onto the drive, giving it a quick whir to test the fit.

“Maybe,” he says. “But they’re also the only hope the world has in a global war.”

“War? Against what?”

“Hunger,” Steve answers. He shifts his weight, remaining in his kneeling position while he peers up at Bucky. “There’s no consensus that GMOs cause problems—health, environment, anything. It’s the same DNA that’s already out there in the world. But they’re the only thing that can help grow enough food to feed nine billion people.” He wipes his hands with the rag on his shoulder when he sets the tool down, but Steve still manages to smudge grease on his forehead when he swipes loose hair from his own face. “It’s basic population math. We either let farmers grow genetically-modified rice and wheat, or…”

Steve trails off with a heavy purpose. He puts his blackened thumb and forefinger together—and _snaps_.

Bucky’s face blanches just as much as it should.

“It’s not the seeds or the plants that are the problem with GMOs,” Steve goes on, picking up the wrench and zeroing in on that troublesome bolt. “It’s really the same as hybrid varieties bred on farms, just made faster. The problem is the companies that make them; they’re racketeers. They take advantage of farmers with bad output and make them slaves to their patented product. They trap them.”

Bucky goes quiet for a while. Steve can’t help but wonder where all this information is landing with him, if he already had a strong-headed opinion about the matter. But he knows that Bucky is listening to him speak.

“So do _you_ buy those seeds?” Bucky eventually asks.

Steve shoots him a sarcastic sort of glare, and then he tilts his head in the far direction of the barn where he’s got pallets of soft red wheat grain. Bucky’s eyes follow the gesture.

“I use a genetically modified variety of wheat, but not from the big corporations you hear about in the news. I buy my seed from a small biotech company based in Switzerland. They work with the World Food Program.”

Bucky starts wandering in the direction of the seed bags.

“What is it modified to do?”

“A few things,” Steve answers, amplifying his voice so that Bucky can hear him across the new distance. “It’s a little more drought-tolerant. But the main difference is the root system. It’s got increased depth as well as more lateral reach, and that helps the plants establish better in looser topsoil. Eroded soil.”

Bucky stops halfway to the pallets and spins back around. He’s wearing one of the pairs of blue jeans Steve had picked up for him last month, and they fit him exceptionally well considering that Steve had to guess at his size. They’re only a little loose; the dark-washed denim sits just a bit lower on his hips than it should, but it still manages to hug the lean muscle of his thighs.

“Like _your_ soil,” Bucky says with importance.

Steve raises his eyes to Bucky’s face. The corner of his mouth tilts up, and he nods.

“Yeah, Buck,” he answers. “That’s right.”

—

He’s bold—even if Steve doesn’t always understand what he’s being bold about.

It’s another blazing mid-August afternoon when Steve comes out of the barn after spending his morning adjusting the blades on his seed drill, and spots Bucky standing in the millet. He’s about one hundred yards from Steve near the edge of the field in one of the spots where his crop had grown poorest. It’s also the same place where Steve had dug a new soil pit the day before in another effort to study the profile.

Steve decides not to approach him or call over. He leans against the barn instead, looking on. Interested.

He watches as Bucky kneels down. He’s got something in his hand already, but Steve can’t tell what it is. Bucky crouches, nearly out of sight, for a full minute before Steve sees him stand again.

It’s hot out, but a light breeze has been slowly rolling in throughout the day. Bits of straw from the dead stalks of would-be grain get kicked up beneath Bucky’s feet as he walks back to the house, paper flowers falling apart in the wind. The back door opens and shuts, and then he’s gone, never the wiser to Steve watching him.

A droplet of something falls on Steve’s forehead, and he looks up. The barest shape of a cloud has come from the other side of nowhere to pass straight over his head. A second drop falls on his cheek as he stares.

Out of a once empty nothing, the strange, lonely cloud whispers down its rain.

—

Bucky is soft with freshly-cut edges—

(“Steve, do you have any stamps?”

“I do. Why?”

“I need to mail something.”)

—and he’s always full of surprises.

And he _dreams_.

—

_The skin under Steve's lips is soft and heated, glazed with sugar, glistening with salt. It’s sweet and it’s sweat, and Steve wants to drink it._

_He tightens his grip on the hips in his hands and lifts up, looking down at where his flesh disappears inside Bucky’s._

“Daddy…”

_Steve groans and buries his face in Bucky’s neck once again. He moves their muscle and bone together in waves, lifting and moving them both, wedging his cock in as deep as he can go at this angle. His boy whines loudly as his body goes tighter than the miracle he already is._

_“That’s it, sweetheart, c’mon,” Steve rasps. “Come on Daddy’s cock—”_

Steve wakes to the sound of shouting.

It’s not coming from him.

His nocturnal erection fades to flaccid in record time, gone before he can finish throwing on the nearest pair of pants. He rushes out of his room and down the hall to Bucky’s, but stops with his hand on the doorknob, controlled panic resting in his throat. The screaming hasn’t repeated itself since the first time he’d heard it.

He listens.

It might sound like nothing but an empty room to unenhanced ears, but Steve can hear the breathing. Bucky’s lungs are sucking in short, sharp gasps separated by scared whimpers, and it makes Steve own lungs answer with a quiet growl. The distressed, unconscious gasping is all he hears for a while, no shouting, until Bucky starts speaking in mumbled words. They’re quiet and broken.

 _“‘M sorry, please, I’m_ sorry!”

And then there are sheets rustling furiously, and Steve’s hand is tight on the doorknob and ready to go because he thinks Bucky is going to start screaming again, but he doesn’t. The noises suddenly go silent.

Steve waits. Every line in his body is stiff as a board, but he doesn’t remove his hand; he keeps it glued to the doorknob until the breathing on the other side turns slow and rhythmic. Soon, he starts to hear the faint whistle of the lightest snores.

He releases the knob and sinks to the floor with his back against the wall of the hallway.

Steve doesn’t sleep that night, and he doesn’t try to. He can’t chance another lewd dream when his job is to sit sentry outside Bucky’s room.

He stays there until the sunrise comes falling through the east window.

—

Everything Steve learns about Bucky makes him want to learn more.

—

Bucky looks tired and shaky the next morning. Steve sits in his chair closer to him during breakfast than he normally does, and he doesn’t head out into the field until nine o’clock. He cites a tiredness of his own. They don’t speak more on it.

Steve takes his usual shower after he’s done in the field that day, and the two of them make an early dinner—together, this time—with Bucky in charge of flavoring their pork chops and herbed potatoes. The sun doesn’t set until half past eight this time of year; it’s still plenty bright outside when they sit down at the kitchen table with their hot food and their cold iced tea.

They eat in a comfortable silence. They’re about halfway through their meal when Steve sets his fork down and wipes his mouth with a napkin.

“I was hoping you might do me a favor while you’re here.”

Bucky’s fork makes a muted clanging noise as his grip falters. He looks up at Steve, wide-eyed with pink in his cheeks. It’s so cute that Steve can’t even bring himself to feel bad for the way his words might have sounded.

“Um, yeah? I mean, sure.” And Bucky laughs, nervous but maybe smiling. “I think. What’s up?”

Steve takes a sip of his tea.

“I want you to take over management of the farm operations.”

_“What?”_

Bucky’s expression is incredulous. Steve had expected as much, but he’s thought about what he was going to ask, and he knows Bucky will eagerly say yes.

“You said you were bored, right? There’s only so many different kinds of scones you can make.” Steve sets down his tea and reaches into the center of the table to pick up an orange-flavored pastry from the dessert dish that always seems to be there, tipping the scone towards Bucky as he takes a bite. The citrus pairs pleasantly well with their pork. “And I figure there’s not a whole lot you don’t know about what goes on around here now, what with all your questions.”

He watches as Bucky gazes down at his plate, bewildered, but not in an unpleasant way. He’s twirling a potato around in the sauce but showing no intention of eating it yet.

“What would I do?” Bucky asks.

“Paper stuff, mostly,” Steve answers. “Planning. Call up the tractor shop with parts orders. Help me with inventory. The wheat goes in the ground on the last day of summer. Would be nice if I had someone to help me get ready and organized.”

Bucky lifts his head, and his face tumbles through a cascade of emotions in front of Steve’s eyes because Bucky’s heart lives right on his sleeve. He goes from that same bewildered look to confusion, then back to incredulity, and then hopeful joy finally dawns on his face.

He smiles, and it’s—it’s the biggest damn smile Steve’s seen from him yet.

“Okay,” he says, nodding eagerly. He’s excited. “Yeah. What should I do first?”

Bucky falls asleep in the armchair right after dinner that night. He fights it at first—Steve can see it—but eventually the support of his spine surrenders and his neck becomes lax, head lolling off against his own shoulder.

Steve stands and walks over to him, quiet as he retrieves the open laptop precariously balanced in Bucky’s lap. He catches sight of what’s on the screen when he sets it down on the coffee table: a catalog of mineral fertilizers with marked-down sale prices.

He smiles and shuts the laptop, settling back on the couch.

Bucky looks peaceful in his sleep, thank god; Steve’s not sure if he can handle staying put on the other side of a closed door next time. It’s a while until Steve catches himself watching Bucky as he dozes, but before he does, he spends minutes doing nothing but admiring the different shapes in all that effortless beauty.

Bucky’s proportions lend a gorgeous but subtle length to each of his limbs, even with his short stature. Steve wonders if he can even be faulted for seeing an intrinsic sensuality in his legs sprawling over the arm of the chair. Bucky’s entire existence feels erotic. He’s wearing loose, comfortable athletic shorts that reveal the tone of his thighs and show off the light dusting of dark hair. Steve wants to suck purple and blue marks into the paler skin on the inside.

And it makes no sense. It makes no sense because Steve wants to hold Bucky and keep him safe, but he also wants to bruise his skin, and he wants to be there when purple and blue become olive again. He’s feet away and Steve doesn’t get to touch him, doesn’t get to please him. Steve doesn’t get to hold him.

It’s torture. It’s visceral pain. It’s a squeeze on Steve’s throat.

It’s not getting any easier.

* * *


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A wee bit of suggested listening for this chapter:  
> "Crimson and Clover" - Tommy James & The Shondells  
> [Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/track/1vXuYPpkLjn1v06E2EsWQY)/ [YouTube](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GpGEeneO-t0)

* * *

**b u c k y**

a u g u s t 2 1, 2 0 2 5

| 298 days until harvest |

White runs over the edges of the blades as Bucky rinses the razor, and he watches the foam blend with the water in the sink . He’s kind of proud to see that there’s no red or pink mixed with it; he’s already gone through many trial and error experiences before learning the correct way to use one of Steve’s razors instead of the electric shavers he’s always known. He flicks the water away and sets the Schick upright in his toothbrush holder, running a warm, wet towel over the skin of his face like Steve had taught him.

Bucky doesn’t shave very often; not every day, and not even most days. His facial hair has always grown in slowly. He looks in the mirror and touches the fresh, smooth surface of his skin and tries to decide if his cheekbones look less sharp than they did one month ago. It would make sense if they did. He’s been eating every meal with a man who seems to eat enough for four men, and calories aren’t exactly scarce in Steve’s house.

He’s got three more weeks: three more weeks until Bucky gets his surgical stitches out and his splint off. Three more weeks until their arrangement is up and he has to leave. Three more weeks until he loses this sweet and safe shelter Steve has provided for him.

Bucky has been clean, clothed, and well-fed, but there is an expiration date on all this.

Still, Steve has given him a job while he’s here—he’s Steve’s _farm manager_ —and Bucky intends to kick ass at it. If he does his job well, maybe Steve will recommend him to someone to be hired on as a farm hand once Bucky’s little vacation comes to an end. Maybe he won’t have to go back to following railroad tracks and roadside ditches. Maybe.

Bucky runs a brush through his shoulder-length hair for the fourth or fifth time and tries his best to make it lay right. He’s more than just a little nervous about today, and he wants to look nice. He wants to look like someone Steve will take seriously. He wants to look like someone who knows what he’s talking about.

Jesus—he _hopes_ that he knows what he’s talking about.

At least his nail beds look nice.

He turns off the light in the bathroom and crosses to his room—Steve’s guest room, whatever—to change out of the clothes he’d slept in. Bucky chooses the pair of blue jeans that fit him best and one of the more colorful, short-sleeved plaid button-ups that Steve got him. He considers tucking it in before deciding that would look too dorky.

Bucky’s entire outfit, including his socks and his underwear, is composed of items that his boarder and boss bought for him. Yeah, okay. That’s true. Doesn’t mean Bucky can’t wear it well.

He looks up at the old-school analog clock on the wall and sees that it’s almost seven. Steve will be outside already, but he’ll take a break in about a half hour to come in and make them some breakfast. Bucky intends to beat him to it.

On his way out the bedroom, Bucky swipes the thickly packed manilla envelope from his dresser top and slides out the contents, briefly thumbing through to make sure everything is in the exact order he’d placed it. He has to be organized; Bucky can’t screw today up by sorting through papers while trying to find the sheet he needs.

He wants this to work. If Bucky is going to go back to railroad tracks and roadside ditches, then at least he’s going to do it holding his head high and knowing that he did something good while he had the opportunity.

Bucky wants to _be_ good. What he really wants today is for Steve to tell him that he is.

—

He actually does hear the back door open and close this time, because he’s very much listening for it.

“Buck?”

Steve’s voice rings in from the mud room, and Bucky hears him shuffle off his work boots before entering the kitchen.

“Morning, Steve.”

Steve walks over while Bucky is removing the last of the bacon from the pan, setting it on a paper towel-covered plate to drain the grease. He thinks that Steve always looks good with the faint glow of sunrise and sweat. He’s wearing the rare t-shirt instead of something from his endless supply of button-ups—it must be especially hot out—and the shirt is slightly bunched up over the waistband of his jeans. Bucky can spot the hint of a thick trail of blond hair on his lower stomach. He’s decided that Steve must often work outside shirtless before he comes in for breakfast, because he frequently notices Steve emerge from the mudroom with askew buttons or rucked up fabric that betrays that he has hastily pulled on a shirt.

Bucky has never seen what Steve looks like _before_ he pulls the shirt back on, and he regrets that immensely.

“Something smells good,” Steve says, pouring himself a cup of coffee.

The corner of Bucky’s mouth turns up. “You just like the smell of bacon.”

Steve hangs his head, laughing quietly to the tile floor.

“You got me there. But I’m pretty sure I smell something else, too.”

Bucky gives him an overly casual shrug and tries to hide his smile as he moves about the kitchen. “I guess that would be the quiche in the oven.”

The skin on Steve’s forehead rises up, deepening the faint creases and lines that already live there.

“Quiche?”

“Mhm,” Bucky hums. “Crustless, easy to make. I used those tomatoes that were gonna go bad, and some of that leftover ham. Will be out of the oven in fifteen minutes.”

“Alright then,” Steve says. Bucky thinks he might sound impressed, or at least pleasantly surprised. “Guess I’ll go wash up.”

Bucky pretends to swipe at Steve’s hand when he goes for a piece of bacon, but there’s no real venom behind it. He lets Steve take it.

Steve comes back with meticulously clean hands once breakfast is out of the oven. Bucky sets the quiche down on the cooling rack and tightens the foil cover on the bacon, making sure everything will be hot and ready once he’s executed the next part of his plan.

“So, um, while we’re waiting for that to cool…” Bucky starts. He hopes his voice doesn’t come off as shaky. “I kinda had some stuff I wanted to talk to you about. Farm stuff. Getting ready for the wheat.”

Steve gives him a once over and nods.

“Alright.” He walks to the kitchen table and pulls out a chair for himself, sitting down. “Lay it on me, Buck.”

Bucky takes a deep breath and lets it out carefully. It’s probably too loud, too obvious that he’s nervous, but he supposes there’s nothing he can do about that now; he _is_ nervous.

He follows Steve and takes a seat in his regular chair beside him.

“Okay,” he starts, and yeah, his voice is definitely shaky and— _fuck_ , why can’t he just get his shit together? “So, um. I’ve been doing some thinking.”

Steve’s expression is simultaneously intense—as usual—and intrigued. Bucky feels pinned down with the weight of Steve’s eyes on him. He’s not sure he’s ever been this anxious around the man since the first time they met.

“Go on.”

That particular octave of Steve’s voice has a bad tendency to make Bucky shiver, and even Bucky doesn’t know where it comes from. He tries to collect himself, hoping that the way he closes his eyes for a quick second can be passed off as blinking and not hiding behind the dark to calm his nerves.

“Alright,” Bucky breathes, more to himself than to Steve. “Alright. So—and please, _please_ don’t be mad at me for this.” Bucky says it with an overtone of pleading, and Steve’s eyebrows come together in concern. “I know I didn’t ask first. But I… I took a sample of your soil. To send to a testing lab.”

Whatever had briefly tensed in Steve’s face loosens, so Bucky can guess that he hasn’t done something _really_ bad. Still, Steve looks wary.

“Okay…” Steve says. “What kind of lab?”

Bucky exhales and reaches for his manilla envelope at the center of the table; he’d set it there as soon as he’d walked down the stairs that morning. He sorts through the contents quickly and slides the thickest part from the stack across the surface of the table so Steve can read the first page.

“ _Purdue University Agricultural Extension_ ,” Steve reads aloud. His shoulders ease up even more as he looks back to Bucky. “I’ve… Yeah. I’ve sent them samples in the past. That’s how I know my nitrogen levels are so low.”

 _Oh._ Bucky’s already frazzled nerves suddenly rise through the roof. He—fuck—he hadn’t stopped to think that maybe Steve has been down this road before.

He is so, so stupid.

“Well, um…” Bucky reaches over and flips to the soil test report, which only takes up a couple pages of the whole packet he’s set in front of Steve. The tight feeling in his gut is heightened by the way his knuckles brush against Steve’s as he sorts out the papers. “Okay, so here’s what they sent me,” he goes on, and he’s talking way too fast but he can’t stop it now or he won’t be able to start again. “Your pH balance is good for wheat, and it’s well enough draining—not that too much water is an issue right now—but, um, yeah… your nitrogen levels are, like. Really bad.”

His heart thuds dumbly in his chest, a waste of noise, and Bucky feels like nothing less than an idiot. He’s got more to say—a lot more—but the fact that he’s started off this whole… _presentation_ by telling Steve something that he clearly already knows does not bode well for his likelihood of one day becoming a farm hand for Kelly down the road.

He’s going to be homeless again in three weeks. He knows it.

“Yeah, Buck.” Bucky can’t tell if Steve’s defeated sigh is directed at him or the dead land outside. “That’s why we have to use so much fertilizer.” Steve pauses, running a hand through his own hair. “It’s bad. And honestly I—I didn’t want to, but maybe I need to put more in this year.”

Bucky stays silent for a beat—okay, _several_ beats—but then a spark of bravery comes down through the ceiling and lands somewhere in the back of his skull. He suddenly feels bold enough to speak, dumb idiot or not.

“Or you could put none at all.”

Steve pauses in the halfway through lifting his coffee. It’s almost comical how dramatically he halts with the mug on its way to his mouth before slowly lowering it back to the table. For better or for worse, Bucky definitely has Steve’s interest—and his incredulity, if the expression on his face is anything to go by.

“What?”

Bucky takes out a much thinner packet of paper from his stack.

“I wanted to ask these people for advice; something specific to your soil. I figured there’s gotta be _something_ that can grow and survive in it, even if it isn’t wheat, so I wanted to see if they could tell us what kind of things might work out, or maybe how to fix the nitrogen problem... any of that. Or even how to prevent further erosion? I mean, they’re experts on this stuff.” He turns the papers so Steve can read them. “But then I saw online that they can’t give that kind of advice to commercial farmers—that’s you”—and he thinks it’s funny how the corner of Steve’s mouth ticks up, but he doesn’t dwell on it—“I guess that’s ‘cause of the liability or whatever, but yeah. So I told them I was a college kid experimenting at home. I mean, I’m not, but…” He trails off and shrugs.

“Okay,” Steve says, and yeah—he’s all ears. Bucky can tell. “What did they tell you?”

Bucky points to the top piece of paper—a letter, complete with the Purdue Extension letterhead—and gestures to a place a few paragraphs in.

“They said we might be better off ‘intercropping’ with another plant. That’s when—”

“—I know what intercropping is,” Steve laughs, tilting the sheet up to read where Bucky has indicated.

And it’s another _oh_ moment for Bucky. He stops his explanation short with an embarrassed blush.

“Um, right. Okay.” He’s flustered now, stumbling through his words. Bucky shuffles through the rest of the packet and tries to remember what he was going to say next. It’s hard when he has to skip a piece of what he’s carefully practiced in the mirror. “So, there’s… We can—you could, like…”

“Shit,” Steve swears, glancing up from the paper with a sudden contrite look on his face. “I’m sorry, Buck. Why don’t… Why don’t you go ahead and refresh me. About intercropping.”

“That’s stupid,” Bucky mumbles. He sort of wants to lean back and cross his arms and pout, but he wants to avoid acting like a child even more. He’s supposed to be showing Steve that he’s a professional—or at least, he could be. “You already know what it is. Don’t try to humor me.”

“It’s been a while since I last thought about it,” Steve argues. “And this way we can make sure that we’re on the same page.”

He gives Bucky a small smile, and it’s surprisingly warm and encouraging on him for such a tough, gruff guy and the extent of Bucky’s mood. Bucky feels his own disappointment melting a little.

“Okay,” Bucky eventually agrees. He straightens his spine and tries to pick up where he’d left off in his planned proposal. “So when you intercrop, that means you plant two or more things side-by-side. They call them ‘companion crops,’ and you have to pick things that work together, so you gotta make sure that the things you plant are different enough that they don’t have to fight over stuff like sunlight or the same kinds of nutrients.” Bucky pauses, trying to gauge Steve’s reaction and hoping he’s not screwing this up, but Steve isn’t laughing or correcting him. He must be doing okay. “And the cool thing is that there are some plants that actually put more nutrients _into_ the soil than they take out.” He pulls out a glossy, full-color sheet with pretty burgundy-colored blossoms. “Like crimson clover.”

Steve eyes the bright colors and text on the sheet. He reads over it briefly, but then his mouth makes a shape like a sad smile.

“Yeah. I know,” Steve sighs. “The clover takes nitrogen out of the air and puts it into the soil so the other plants can use it. That’s called nitrogen fixation,” and yeah, Bucky remembers reading that in the packet. “Increases yield real nice when done right. But I’m sorry, Buck.” His gaze is almost apologetic when he raises his eyes. “I’ve looked into it. Red clover will kill quick in a drought like this.”

“I—No,” Bucky starts, realizing where Steve didn’t understand him. “Not red clover.” He points back to the page, and his finger tapping against the sheet makes a faint thumping noise. “ _Crimson_ clover.”

Steve’s brow knits together as he scans over the page again.

“What’s the difference?” he asks, studying the text closer.

Bucky’s answer comes rapidly spoken. He feels like he’s finally got some sort of string to tug on, and that makes him feel better. Confident.

“Crimson clover is a little more drought-tolerant, to start. They grow it a lot in the southeast, and even in Oregon—it’s good for ground cover in orchards, I guess—but not a lot of people use it up where we are because it can die off in the winter. It’s not as good at staying alive in the cold as wheat is. But it grows faster than red clover, so I figure at least there’s more time for it to establish itself before the snow comes.” He gestures to the letter from the extension again. “It does technically grow in our climate zone, and the people there say that it does a lot better when it’s grown with grasses like wheat. It apparently helps protect the clover from freezing, kind of like the snow does with your winter wheat. Besides, this winter isn’t supposed to be too cold. Even if it does winterkill, it’s still good green manure.” He shoots Steve a hopeful smile and a shrug. “And your soil is better off than it was before even if you only grow it once.”

It’s interesting to watch Steve think. Bucky could tell as soon as he’d met him that this lonely farmer was an analytical guy, always planning, always strategizing. He wonders if it will be a good or bad thing if he’s just thrown a wrench in Steve’s scrupulously thought-out intentions for the upcoming growing season. Hopefully he isn’t the kind of guy to get angry when he’s caught off-guard or confused.

“You said they don’t grow crimson a lot in Indiana,” Steve says. “Would this even work in that wreck we’ve got out there?”

Bucky almost blushes at hearing Steve say ‘we,’ like it’s their wreck—their farm—instead of just Steve’s _._ He shuffles the papers around and relocates the sheets with the lab numbers.

“Actually, um, yeah.” Bucky points down a list of chemical names on the top sheet. “Your phosphorus and potassium and boron levels—”

_“—Boron?—”_

“—are really good for crimson clover, and it likes the same pH levels and soil types as the wheat. The seeds are kind of expensive—”

“That’s not a problem.”

“—But you wouldn’t even want to use nitrogen fertilizer to jumpstart the wheat, because that could limit how good the clover nodules grow—those are the parts in the roots that put the nitrogen in the soil. With a good crop, the clover will fix enough nitrogen into the soil to feed the wheat better than even the mineral fertilizer.”

Bucky finishes, and Steve’s expression settles into a cross between interest and caution.

“How would we do it?” Steve asks, and _yes_ —! This is Bucky’s favorite part.

“You would plant the clover at the end of the summer,” he answers. “That way it has enough time to grow before the first frost. You could do it at the same time as the wheat, actually—and, oh! You have to inoculate the clover with this one kind of bacteria right after you plant it: _Rhizobium leguminosarum_.” Bucky stops and chuckles. “It sounds like a _Harry Potter_ spell.”

He remains silent while Steve processes the information and reviews the different paper items on the table. Steve’s eyes flit across the words and charts quickly—he’s clearly some sort of speed reader—and sometimes his lips move along with the words whenever he comes back to read something twice. Bucky wonders how handsome Steve would look wearing readers.

Eventually, Steve sets everything down and looks up at Bucky.

“If we did this and it doesn’t work, it could waste the wheat faster than growing it alone. Could set me up for erosion in the winter.” He stops and sighs. “I’m still concerned that there’s not a lot of precedence for this in our growing region.”

Once again, Bucky reaches for the glossy sheet with the clover picture on it, this time flipping it over to the back.

“They’ve actually been working on research for this at the university. They studied the clover and wheat together with, like, sixty different farmers, and it says here that they had really good results for land with bad soil. They even think it could be the next big cropping trend in Indiana. They apparently just got a grant to start a new study in a year or two. So… Yeah. It sounds like it works.” He smiles sheepishly and flips the sheet back over to the colorful picture. “Plus the clover flowers are really pretty. And they’re good for honeybees.”

Steve laughs and shakes his head, and Bucky thinks it’s a good sign. He likes to make Steve laugh.

“This is good work, Bucky,” Steve says. Bucky flushes, feeling the praise down to his toes. “But I need to think about it.”

“Oh! Yeah, of course.” Bucky gathers up the papers and tries to put them back in the same precise order he’d started with, placing them all back inside the big manilla envelope. He passes it to Steve. “All yours. You can read it whenever. I actually got the phone number of the guy at the extension if you have any questions.”

He may have started out shaky, and he may have felt like a giant dork at first, but Bucky actually feels really happy now that he’s said everything he’d set out to say. Even if Steve decides not to go for it, Bucky thinks this morning was a success. Steve seems pleased with him.

“I’ll, um,” Bucky starts, suddenly not knowing what to do with his hands now that they’re not full of paper. “I’ll go cut up the quiche.”

Bucky stands, but Steve stops him with a hand on his good arm. His fingertips are warm and calloused.

“Wait,” he says. He gestures at the now-vacant chair. “Sit with me for another minute. We can heat the quiche up if it gets cold.”

Now it’s Bucky’s turn to be wary. Maybe Steve just has more questions about the clover? Or did Bucky do something bad? Is he in trouble?

He sits, trying to school his face into something neutral and not at all freaked-out.

“You were a student before?” Steve asks.

Bucky freezes. He stares.

_What?_

“I remember,” Steve explains. “From the emergency room. It sounded like you used to be a student.”

But it’s totally unexpected that Steve is bringing that conversation up—not even a conversation, really, just a detail on a hospital form. Bucky had practically forgotten it. He wonders what else he’d mentioned to Steve in those early, painkiller-addled days that he hardly remembers a solid thing from.

“Not really,” Bucky answers. “I took a few gap years after high school to save up for it, but, um. I just did some junior college.”

Steve shrugs. “Junior college is still college.”

“Maybe.” Bucky wishes he had a coffee mug of his own right now. Something to fiddle with. “But I didn’t even finish.”

It feels weird to say it out loud. Bucky hasn’t talked about this to anyone in a long time. It’s been over a year now that he’s been gone from school, and the only people who needed to know were his parents and his friends that asked where he’d gone. The topic never came up with the gas station owners who’d let Bucky sleep behind their dumpsters.

“Was that because of what happened with your father?” Steve asks. His voice is low but gentle.

Bucky nods, but it's a lie. Maybe it would have ended up the same way in the end, but Bucky had dropped out of school months before Pops caught him with his hand down another man's pants.

“I’m sorry," Steve says. It's sincere. "What did you study?”

Bucky wants to know why Steve cares; why he’s interested. He’d thought it went okay overall, but maybe he really _had_ sounded like such an idiot talking about the clover that Steve suddenly has questions about his level of education. Was he surprised about the college because Bucky seemed too dumb for it? Did he think that it was Bucky’s fault for being stupid enough to out himself and land himself in a ditch?

“Just general stuff, mostly,” Bucky mumbles. “For when I wanted to transfer to a big college. But I took extra maths and sciences. Calculus, chemistry… And I also took an introductory class for engineering students?” He says it like a question, like he wants to gauge if the truth can even sound believable. “‘Cause I, um. I was thinking I was going to try to be an engineer.” He pauses and shrugs. "It was silly, I guess.”

Steve raises an eyebrow in interest and takes a sip of his coffee.

“That doesn’t sound silly to me. What kind of an engineer?”

“I dunno,” Bucky answers, playing with a spot of chipped paint on the table. He should touch it up for Steve soon. He can be smart enough to paint furniture. “I liked chemistry, I guess.”

Steve goes quiet for a while. Bucky can’t bring himself to look up and see whatever look of judgement is probably on his face.

“You should go back,” Steve says. “When you can.”

Bucky laughs.

“I’m getting kind of old now.”

“Never too old to better yourself. Besides—you’re smart. You should give yourself a chance to do something with that big brain of yours.”

Bucky wants to point out that he’s got no way of getting back to school even if he was ready to—not when he’s busy worrying about where he’s going to be sleeping in three weeks—but he’s too stuck on Steve calling him ‘smart.’ It doesn’t sound like he’s mocking him. Bucky’s mouth tries to tilt up in a smile.

“Did you go to college?” he asks instead, changing the subject.

Steve chuckles into his mug. “A bit. Never finished either. Art school.”

Bucky’s eyebrows hit his hairline.

“Art school?” he laughs, incredulous. _“You?”_

“Yeah, me,” Steve says. He rolls his eyes. “I wasn’t half-bad, you know.”

Bucky is thankful for the lighter mood in the room. He doesn’t feel like Steve thinks he’s stupid after all, and now they’ve got something to talk about that doesn’t involve suspicious breeds of clover or Bucky’s ill-fated attempt at school. Steve tells him a little more about the kinds of art he used to work on before he dropped out. Bucky listens while he finally cuts up the quiche.

It’s a little cold, but it still tastes good.

—

A rare summer cool front comes through midday, bringing temperatures down to almost something pleasant by the evening. Steve finishes up the dishes from dinner and grabs a couple of beers from the fridge, and he asks Bucky if he wants to drink one with him on the front porch and enjoy the nice weather. Bucky does.

One beer becomes two, and then that second beer becomes a third. Now, Bucky is sitting on the porch swing feeling pleasantly tipsy while Steve has taken the large wicker two-seater across from him. He doesn’t appear to be nearly as affected by the alcohol, but at least Steve is smiling.

Bucky wants to make Steve smile a lot. He wants to make Steve laugh. He wants to be a reason that Steve gets up in the morning and— _woah,_ his brain says, screeching to a very slow, beer-logged halt.

Where had _that_ come from?

Bucky tries to cover up the shocked expression that has surely made its way onto his face by laughing at something Steve says, and he closes his eyes against the light breeze. It’s a nice distraction. He sinks into it, imagining what it would be like to sit here on this porch with Steve each and every night and know security, know safety. Peace.

“Yeah,” Steve laughs, conceding to Bucky’s good-natured insult to his cooking. The creases at the corners of his eyes betray his genuine happiness in the moment. “You got me there, Buck.”

Their shared laughter comfortably fades with the sunlight behind the distant hills to the west. Bucky knows that if he were to stand and walk to the other end of the pond, he would be able to set his eyes east and see stars rising. Maybe he could stand by himself in the dark and look up, telling those dots of light something. He’s not sure what he could say.

“My mom taught me to cook,” Bucky says, watching the late summer doves fly over the house and disappearing in the direction of their feast of failed millet. “She’s amazing at it.”

He doesn’t really know what compelled him to say it; maybe it’s just hard for him to think about cooking without thinking about his mom. He wonders what she made for dinner today. He wonders if Becca liked it, or if there were too many onions.

“When did they throw you out?”

Bucky startles, half because he’d been lost in his own thoughts and half because of the unexpected question. He comes back to himself and decides there’s no reason Steve can’t know everything.

“Six months ago,” he answers. “Middle of winter. And it wasn’t ‘they’ so much as ‘he.’ Mom cried and screamed the whole time, but it was no use. Pops had already decided I was dead to them.”

He doesn’t look at Steve as he speaks. Meeting his eyes would feel like too much of a challenge to Steve to make sure he says the right thing, when really there’s nothing for Steve to say.

“I’m sorry.”

Bucky doesn’t thank him for the condolences. He doesn’t say, ‘Why are you sorry? He threw me out, _you_ took me in,’ but he sort of wants to. He stays silent and sips his beer instead.

Their shared quiet lasts a long time, but it’s not silence; not with the crickets playing their summer melodies and the doves cooing in the field. Bucky gets tired of watching the reeds growing in the pond, so his eyes drift to Steve holding his ale in his right hand.

“Where did your scars come from?”

The question is out of his mouth before Bucky can think better of it. The third beer doesn’t really care that it’s far too personal of a thing to ask. He at least has the courtesy to look up at Steve’s face while he waits for an answer, instead of staring at the web of red, branching lines.

“Struck by lightning.”

Bucky’s eyes get so wide that they almost pop out of his head.

“ _What?”_

Steve shrugs like what he’s just said is inconsequential and takes a sip from his beer.

“Got struck,” he repeats, even though Bucky had definitely heard him the first time. He rolls up his right sleeve further past the elbow and holds his arm out for Bucky to see. “It’s called ‘Lichtenberg scarring.’ It’s the markings of blood vessels bursting as electricity passes through.”

“Woah,” Bucky says dumbly. He closes his mouth. “When did that happen?”

“Almost three years ago now.”

“How?”

He expects Steve to launch into some kind of story about how he was working the fields and a big summer storm came along, one like the rains that washed Bucky into a ditch in front of Steve’s truck, but he doesn’t. Steve’s face settles into something unreadable. Bucky wants him to go back to laughing and smiling.

“I put my hands on something that I shouldn’t have.”

And Bucky… Bucky doesn’t know what that means.

“I…” he starts, but he doesn’t know the end to that sentence, so he comes up with something on the fly, and he’s done ‘what’ and ‘how’ already, so— “Why?”

Steve looks Bucky dead in the eyes, and the weight of it locks Bucky in for the second time that day. The bizarre moment doesn’t break until the evening breeze brings a stray bit of millet hay tumbling across the porch. Steve’s eyes follow it.

“To fix something I let break. And so a lot of other people could go where they belong.”

Bucky still doesn’t know what that means. He _does_ know that he’s not going to get any more out of Steve, so he decides not to press.

“Oh.”

He takes a drink from his bottle and looks back out at the reeds waving in the breeze. His brain feels a little syrupy. Bucky wonders if he should be thanking Steve for answering his probing questions, but then he decides that would sound weird.

But maybe he can return an unasked favor in kind.

“They weren’t supposed to come home from bible group until six,” Bucky starts, loud enough for Steve to hear but too quietly for the billowing reeds to know anything of it. “Mom, Pops. Becca.”

He glances over at Steve, who’s staring at him again. His face is open. Bucky knows his ears are, too.

“There was this guy,” he goes on, and he feels himself smiling fondly about something he still can’t regret. “Johnny. I met him at school last year. He was on the baseball team—was, is. Really good at it. Always top of the batting order.” His smile disappears. “I didn’t hear them come in. Johnny didn’t either. I think I was too nervous and excited; I could feel my heart beating in my own ears.”

Steve’s grip on his beer looks tighter than before.

“About Johnny?” he asks.

“About him, yeah,” Bucky nods. “About any of it, I guess. I’ve known I liked men since I was a teenager, but that was my first time doing so much as make out with a guy.” He pauses, remembering. “The bedroom door opened right after he got my jeans undone.”

Steve is silent. Bucky’s not nervous about the confession—Steve already knows that he’s gay, already knows that it’s why his Pops kicked him out—but he still barely pushes away the urge to start biting his nails.

“My ma never knew,” Steve says, speaking up. “I don’t know how she would have reacted if she had, but I don’t think it would have been as bad.” He pauses. “She died when I was eighteen.”

Bucky doesn’t know which part of Steve’s confession to absorb first. He remembers that odd thing Steve had said before, that thing from the first day Bucky spent in Steve’s house. That thing about being here and being safe and _—“I’d have no room for judgement, even if I thought it was wrong”_ —but Bucky had always thought he must have mistaken what that sentence implied. Was Steve… Was Steve really saying that he was gay, too? That this guy, this farmer, this hulking beast of a man with plaid shirts and work boots and sometimes dirt under his nails was—oh, what would Pops say—a _fairy?_

Then there’s the rest of what Steve has just said. Bucky knows that’s the part he needs to focus on.

“I’m sorry,” he says, because now it’s his turn to say it. “About your mom.”

Steve gives him a single nod; his thanks. They return to their silence for almost a minute, but Bucky can’t—he can’t do it. He can’t stay away.

“Are you out?” he asks. “To your friends, your other family?”

If Steve doesn’t like the question, his face doesn’t show it. “Don’t have any other family. But my team—my squad from the Army—they knew. Don’t really see the benefit in broadcasting it around here, though.”

And Bucky—maybe more than anyone ever should—knows exactly what Steve means by that.

“I didn’t know you were in the Army. When did you come out?” It’s too late by the time Bucky hears his own question, and he ducks his head. “I’m sorry, that’s not my business. I just…” He figures he might as well be honest about his rudeness. “I never got to come out, really. Not on my own terms. But I want to tell people in the future; new people, friends.” He pauses for a beat. “I want to meet someone.”

Steve’s mouth tilts up in what Bucky thinks is supposed to be a sly smile, but something about it is stiff.

“Someone like Johnny?” he teases, and yeah, there’s something else behind his tone.

Bucky laughs anyways.

“Yeah, I guess.”

“Don’t sweat it,” Steve says. “I don’t mind you asking. The truth is that it’s been a long time since I’ve felt like I had to hide it, but I never put it out there much to begin with. Back East, I saw just as many women as I saw anyone else. No one asked questions about the men.”

“Back East?” Bucky echoes. That’s new to him. “Where are you from?”

Steve’s smirk grows, and he raises his beer in the air before bringing it to his mouth.

“Brooklyn. Born and raised.”

That laughter that escapes Bucky is almost an embarrassing guffaw. He’s glad Steve never seems to be put off when he’s acting like a dumb dork.

 _“Brooklyn?”_ he repeats. “Seriously? I’ve been sitting here all this time thinking I’m the city boy between the two of us, and you grew up in _Brooklyn?”_

Steve’s laughter lights up his whole face and makes the reeds tickle the wind.

“Hey, look, I’m the one who bought a damn farm,” he says. “Maybe you _are_ the city boy.”

“So how the hell did you end up here?”

And then the laughter fades, and Bucky suddenly has the feeling that _this_ was the question he really shouldn’t be asking; not the scars, not his sexuality, not the coming out. Steve’s expression becomes that grim, stony look that Bucky is so used to seeing on him—or at least, he had been used to seeing it. He saw it for the first time in the emergency room, but Steve has worn it less and less with each passing day. Sometimes it still comes along at seemingly random moments.

“Got out of the Army,” Steve answers. “Had nothing back there. Back East. Went looking for a change of scenery.”

Bucky knows he should change the subject. The facts, however, are that he’s still at the end of his third beer, and he’s a lightweight at all of a hundred and fifty pounds, and he’s not very good at asking easy questions tonight.

“Army, huh?” He tips his beer back into his mouth when Steve nods, expressionless. “Bet you’ve seen some crazy shit.”

Steve lets out a single huff of laughter, and the sound attests that what Bucky’s just said is an understatement.

“Yeah,” Steve answers. “But I walked out the other side.”

And that’s a lot for Bucky to unpack—Steve’s words, his tone, his expression—but yeah, Bucky is definitely tipsy, so he decides that it’s _still_ his responsibility to loosen the mood. The beer says that if he stays away from questions about Steve’s past, he might actually do it right this time.

Bucky tucks his legs under his own body to draw attention, and he puts on a smile. The beer speaks again, and it’s telling him that he’s feeling just daring enough to try and make it look flirty.

“Well…” he drawls, lifting the neck of his honestly empty bottle to his lips again. “You said you went looking for new scenery. Do you like what you’ve found?”

Steve is silent at first, playing with the label on his beer, but that intense expression slowly but surely melts back into something easy. He lifts his eyes to meet Bucky’s—a whole different kind of intensity darkening that cornflower blue—and the corner of his mouth bends upward so slightly that Bucky almost misses it.

“Yeah, Buck,” Steve says. “I think I do.”

—

Breakfast the next morning is bacon and toast and a lot of fresh fruit. Steve is the one who makes it.

“I want to do it,” Steve says, a bright piece of cantaloupe approaching his lips. “The clover.”

Bucky’s lips part in shock. He’d been so caught up in making sure his proposal sounded smart that he’d forgotten to hope that Steve would accept it.

“I, um.” Bucky blinks, spreading the butter too thin over the triangle of toast in his hand. “Really?”

Steve finishes chewing and wipes his mouth with his napkin, and then he goes for another chunk of melon. The top button of his shirt is in the wrong hole. His chest hair peeks out.

“Really.”

A rare cloud in the sky moves outside, and the light within the sunrise comes streaming through the kitchen window, gleaming off the tines of Steve’s fork.

* * *

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Lichtenberg scarring: [[mild example ](https://i.imgur.com/n2Am8gD.png)] [[intense example](https://static.boredpanda.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/Scars-After-Surviving-Lightning-Strike-Lichtenberg-Figures-Photos-20-5b6d30923278e__700.jpg)]
> 
>  _Trifolium incarnatum_ \- [Crimson clover](https://the1918.tumblr.com/post/640504577775501313/crimson-clover-and-song-of-the-rolling-earth) (common name)  
> 
> 
> ...I promise this is the last chapter you will have to deal with farming lectures, lol. Now onto the really good stuff that you came for! **[Edit:]** But don't worry! The farming is not going away! Steve's soil and the coming crop is the central backbone of _Song of the Rolling Earth_. I just mean that we're done with chapters that are like fifty perfect farming talk, lol.


	4. Chapter 4

* * *

**s t e v e**

a u g u s t 2 5, 2 0 2 5

| 294 days until harvest |

_“Fuck.”_

Bucky had awoken early that morning, apparently determined to make fresh raspberry scones on a Monday to start off the week. Steve had come in from his morning chores to find him reaching up high into one of the cabinets—fetching something he absolutely should not have been attempting to retrieve with the use of only one arm—and Bucky’s shirt had ridden up, exposing a sweet strip of skin. And then the pretty little dimples above the sinful slope of his ass had just _been_ there, curves carved into curves. Steve had passed straight through the kitchen with a gruff “morning, Buck,” and then disappeared upstairs.

He doesn’t usually take his first shower of the day before breakfast. He does today.

His efficient washing complete, Steve leans into the tile wall, brow resting against his forearm as his hand flies over himself in a fury and strips away the falling water. He bites down on his lip to smother the groan rumbling through his lungs when he recalls a different scene just days ago, Bucky licking sweet pastry cream from his own fingers, eyes sweeping shut at the taste of it on his tongue. Steve remembers the almost lewd _smack_ from the suction of Bucky’s lips freeing his fingertips, the glisten of spit they’d left behind. Steve also recalls the way he’d had to shift in the kitchen chair and press down on his hardening dick with the heel of his hand, digging his fingernails into the palm of the other, searching for that sting of pain and distraction. That punishment.

Steve isn’t punishing himself now. He’s jacking off in the shower and letting himself imagine what it would feel like to push his dick between Bucky’s spit-slick lips, to watch the corners of his mouth stretch wide. He’s twisting his hand around the swollen cockhead and allowing himself to dream of threading his fingers through Bucky’s hair and guiding his head down slowly, so slowly, slow enough that Bucky can learn to take him and swallow him and make room for him because Bucky hasn’t _ever_ —because Bucky—

_“—that was my first time doing so much as make out with a guy.”_

His hand would be dripping with his own pre-come if not for the shower washing it away.

Bucky has never been with a man. Bucky has never had a dick in his throat, and he’s never had his hand on another man’s cock. Bucky has never been _had_.

Steve can’t have him either. Steve wants him. Steve wants to hold him and kiss him and love all over his face, his sweet neck, and then Steve wants to take him to bed and lay him down and show him just how much he can be slow and gentle with a small body like that, half Steve’s size, nearly half Steve’s years and—

_“Oh—um, no. I’m twenty-five.”_

_“Because, um… The_ blip _.”_

His breath gets choked out in his throat. Steve tightens his grip to halt the momentum of his hand, forcing himself to stop. He opens his eyes and stares down at the sight of his own fingers wrapped around his thick, hot cock, and there they are:

Those lines.

Those red, red lines, a spiderweb of a lie written across his arm in scars.

_“Lightning”—“put my hands on something that I shouldn’t have—”_

—but—

_“—if he be worthy…”_

Steve drops his cock like the stolen electricity is once again back in his hand, burning him.

He reaches for the shower handle. The spray of water, at his command, becomes a painful, icy cold.

—

Stepping out into the hallway, Steve shuts his bedroom door behind him, and the smell of fresh raspberry scones drifts up the stairs into his nose. His dick is soft but heavy inside his jeans.

Bucky isn’t in the kitchen when Steve goes downstairs, but breakfast is still hot on the countertop; he can tell Bucky left it out for him. His absence is atypical, and it worries Steve a little. He hadn’t spoken more than a quick greeting to Bucky on his way through the kitchen earlier in his impatient dash to stroke off to images that shouldn’t be in his head.

Their time is coming to a close if Steve doesn’t do something to stop it from ending. He doesn’t know how. Bucky had been so reluctant to come stay with him in the first place, but forty-four days have come and gone since Bucky entered his life, and that means there are fourteen days left until Bucky has true freedom to leave it. Two weeks.

Steve doesn’t want him to go.

He peers out the window to the porch, but he doesn’t find Bucky there. He checks a few more spots before deciding he’s actually worried now. He considers just making a plate to wait it out, to wait for Bucky to appear, but he can’t.

Steve does find Bucky upstairs. He’s sitting on the edge of his mattress, bedroom door half-open, head hanging heavy on his good hand. He pushes the door open slowly, knowing the squeak of the old brass hinges will announce his presence for him, but he doesn’t cross the threshold.

Bucky hasn’t had another nightmare that Steve is aware of; not since that first time. Steve is confident about this because Steve has been listening for it, getting half of the sleep he normally would and permitting himself to touch his own dick only during hours he knows Bucky is awake. He doesn’t want to miss it if Bucky starts screaming again.

But Bucky isn’t screaming now. Bucky is sitting with his feet on the floor and his elbow on his thigh and hiding his face behind the barrier of his palm. Steve can see through his splayed fingers well enough to spot the red and the wet on Bucky’s cheeks.

Steve isn’t sure how long he’s been lingering in the doorway by the time Bucky lifts his head. His voice cracks when he speaks.

“Hi, Steve.”

He smiles, but it’s broken. His gray eyes look like they’ve gotten brighter beneath the sting of tears. There is a soft pink on the rims around them, hiding under his wet eyelashes, and Steve wants badly to brush those salty droplets away.

Steve isn’t sure what to say in response to the fractured use of his own name, so he doesn’t speak at all. Instead, he does what his bones tell him to do, pushing off the door frame and walking to sit at Bucky’s side.

He pauses.

“Can I…”

Bucky stares up at him for a second, confused. From this close, Steve can tell his cheeks aren’t only red, but tear-stained. They’re not pink like a blush, but pink like tracks of pain running down his face and stinging the skin they touch along the way. Steve watches as understanding at his request clicks, and Bucky looks embarrassed, but he nods.

“Oh, um. Sure.”

The mattress sinks beneath Steve’s weight as he sits, the corners of the bedframe protesting. Bucky’s eyes don’t follow him; they stare ahead, fixated on the empty screen of the television like he’s staring straight through to the back.

“Today is Becca’s birthday.”

Steve’s heart clenches tightly inside the hollow caging of his ribs.

“How old?” he asks, because that’s what people say on birthdays, and because Steve is bereft of any other reply.

“Twenty-five,” Bucky answers. He lets out a sudden, wet chuckle. “And no, we’re not twins. She was born two years after me. I was the only one who got dusted.”

It had been one thing when Steve had forced himself to stop his hand from reeling back and punching the tile in the shower this morning. It’s another struggle entirely to keep himself from smashing the television screen and pushing the glass further into his own hand.

“Do you…” Steve says, voice raspy, thinking. “Do you want to call her?”

And Bucky breaks down. He collapses so quickly that he falls off the bed, but Steve catches him before he hits the floor. He lowers them both carefully instead of pulling Bucky back up to the mattress, settling them against the bed with their legs flat on the carpet. Bucky steadies eventually, and he leans into Steve’s hold, sobbing. Steve doesn’t hesitate to wrap Bucky up, careful but sure, hugging him tight and tucking Bucky’s head under his scruffy, bearded chin. He can smell the scent of the shampoo he bought in Bucky’s hair.

Bucky cries. Steve doesn’t remove his arms.

He tightens them.

Bucky falls to pieces against his chest. Steve is becoming concerned that the tears might actually arrest his breathing when Bucky finally starts to calm, his lungs still heaving but his breath evening out. Steve keeps him wrapped up; he’s afraid if he lets go, Bucky will crumble apart again, and Steve knows that right now, he’s the only thing gluing him together.

“I—I can’t,” Bucky croaks, barely audible when his words are so heavily smothered against Steve’s wet shirt. “I can’t call her. I can’t call that house.”

Steve is well-acclimated to isolation. He has even convinced himself to crave it over the years. But now, with Bucky boneless and aching in his arms, the feeling of isolation consuming this beautiful, joyous man who loves to bake and research plants stabs Steve deeper than anything else has managed to reach today.

He tightens his arms even more.

“I’m so sorry, Buck.”

For a long while, they just sit in the quiet, no sounds except Bucky snuffling and sometimes breaking down again. There isn’t anything else that can be said. Steve tries his best to cast a halo of warmth and security, to be an insulating shield protecting Bucky from the rest of the world, to be everything he’s failed at being before.

He wants to be acceptance, something Bucky hasn’t had in a long, long time—maybe ever.

It feels like more than just a hug, really. It’s comfort. Steve holds him like the sky holds the moon and lets Bucky cry into his sturdy form, and he never once loosens his arms or tries to shush him. He’s happy to let his shirt be soaked.

“It’s alright, Buck,” Steve repeats, over and over, rocking his body back and forth. “It’s alright.”

But it’s not alright, of course. In more ways than one.

Forty-four days have come and gone since Bucky has entered his life, and Steve Rogers is falling in love.

He’s not ready to let this man go.

—

“I just can’t help but think that’s too much, Buck,” Steve says, twirling the pencil between his fingers. “It’ll be hard to keep the spread of clover under control before the wheat starts growing tall.”

Bucky sighs in his spot at the workbench, flipping through the planting guide. Steve listens to the frustrated air escape him from several feet away as he works through the plot diagram of the field.

“All I know is that the grow guide says we should seed at fourteen pounds per acre if we’re intercropping with cereal grains, and wheat is a cereal grain.”

It had taken some time, but Bucky had eventually cried it all out. Their breakfast had been just as good reheated. Steve had refused to let Bucky sink into the embarrassment like Steve could tell he wanted to, so he’d been quick to provide a distraction. He’d insisted that Bucky put on his own work boots—a worthwhile purchase during their most recent trip to town—and join Steve in the barn with his notebooks and plans so they could spend time organizing Steve’s planting activities next month. They’ve been at it for two hours now.

“Okay, yes,” Steve allows. “But I think that applies more to the clay soils where they grow crimson down in the southeast. Our loams up here drain better; the clover will spread early. And remember…” He points to the pallets of special wheat grain at the other end of the barn. “The roots from our wheat seed are different. They’re wider.”

Bucky has been chewing on the end of his pencil. His eyes fall shut while his shoulders slump, and Steve watches him shake his head at himself with a half-grin.

“Oh, yeah,” Bucky laughs through the eraser and his teeth. “I forgot. Good catch.”

He takes the pencil out of his mouth and writes down a few new calculations, revising the amount of clover seed they’re planning to purchase—“let’s go eleven pounds per acre, then”—and Steve doesn’t even pretend to stare at his field diagrams anymore. It’s too rewarding to watch Bucky’s enthusiasm as he works.

“I never thanked you for this,” Steve says a few moments later, making his voice as soft as he can manage. “For coming up with the clover. I think it’s going to work. Even if it doesn’t, I think the land will be better for us having tried.”

Bucky looks up from his planning with a tinge of pink on his face, but this time it is a blush. The tear tracks had faded away more than an hour ago.

“Oh, um. You’re welcome,” he responds. His eyes break from Steve’s and scan the various papers scattered before them. “Maybe… Maybe I can find a way back here in the springtime and see it.”

And there it is, another reminder of what Steve fears the most. Fourteen days; two weeks. Two weeks until this arrangement they have is over and Bucky leaves, too much pride and too few reasons to keep hanging around a century-old failure—even when Bucky thinks Steve’s failure has lived half that life.

He has to give Bucky a reason. He has to.

“Maybe you don’t have to find a way back.”

Bucky’s head snaps up, and no, _no_ , he looks dejected, hurt. Reeling. Steve has fucked _that_ proposal into the ground already, and he hasn’t even arrived at the specifics.

“Oh, um,” Bucky mumbles. “Okay. That’s fine, too, I won’t bother—”

“—No, I, shit,” Steve curses at himself. “I meant that I want to offer you a _job_ , Buck. A paying job. With room and board if you’d like it.”

Bucky’s eyes go big and wide and hopeful like Steve has never seen them before. His lips hang apart, and an inverse crescent of dark magenta comes along to separate the top and bottom, an upside-down moon that Steve could press his tongue between if ever he was so terrible to try.

“What…” Bucky starts, licking only his bottom lip now. “What kind of job?”

“Farm manager,” Steve answers, just as planned. “Same as the job you have now. But I’d pay you.”

Bucky’s face flits from shock to hope to skepticism, and then back around again.

“I, um…” he starts, and Steve picks up where the blank thought calls for someone else to complete it. To give Bucky one more reason.

“Clover goes in the ground the last day of summer,” Steve says. “Sure would be better to have you around for it.”

Bucky blinks rapidly, and then his eyes wander aimlessly across the barn from the ceiling down to the dirt, to the bits of hay on the ground. He looks like he’s spinning through a million different questions in his head. It’s almost dizzying for Steve to watch.

“And you would, um,” Bucky begins, mouth opening and closing as he keeps on licking those hues of red on his lips. His brow furrows like he’s just thought of something. “How… How much?”

Steve hadn’t actually considered the answer, but it’s an easy enough question. He wouldn’t hesitate to empty his bank account for Bucky if he asked, except that neither of them could ever spend that much money in a lifetime.

The small nesting of birds that have made their home in the rafters suddenly announce their presence, chirping loudly while they launch from their perch and fly their way out the barn door. Bucky visibly jolts in his skin, turning their direction.

“How about fifty an hour?” Steve answers, watching Bucky watch the birds. “To start.”

Bucky’s head spins back around so fast that he actually stumbles. Steve lurches forward just barely in time to catch him before he falls, two hands circling his small waist, avoiding the arm that still sits in a sling.

“You s-said…” Bucky stutters, getting his feet back beneath him and breathing so quickly that Steve can feel the movement of air beneath his ribs.

He waits until he knows Bucky is steady, and then Steve removes his hands. He backs away before he’s overcome with a craving to hold the young man for the third time today.

 _“Fifty an hour?_ ” Bucky repeats once he’s gathered half his wits. “What the hell, Steve? That’s like...” Steve can spot him doing rapid math in his head, because Bucky is brilliant in that way. “Like a hundred grand a year!”

Steve shrugs. He’d done the math himself already.

“You deserve it. You could save some of it for when you go back to college.”

“College, I—? Jesus Christ,” Bucky huffs, tugging at his own hair. “Where does all your money even _come_ from?”

“Old family estate. You don’t need to worry about that.”

It’s a lie, of course. It’s also simultaneously remarkable and heartbreaking to watch Bucky count his fortunes in front of him, but Steve refuses to let that habit last.

“You can keep staying here if you don’t want to find a place of your own yet,” he goes on, trying his best not to sound like he already has a preference. “Like I said—room and board.”

Bucky stares. He’s flicking his pencil against the edge of the workbench nervously, tapping out a series of questions in no code that Steve can understand.

“So we… We keep doing this,” Bucky says, gesturing between them. “What we’re doing now. But I stay.”

And when Bucky puts it like that, this wild plan sounds like both the best and the worst idea ever. An indeterminate number of days of _“what they’re doing now”—_ Steve staring, Steve wanting. Steve dreaming of taking what he can never have and loving Bucky completely even when Bucky could never love him back, and the object of his affections never knowing who Steve really is all the while. Never knowing that Steve is the reason he once disappeared from life.

“That’s right,” Steve says. “And you stay.”

Bucky steps away from the bench, leaving the pencil behind. Steve allows him silence with his thoughts, watching him walk in loose circles, thinking.

His circles eventually loop Bucky out of the barn, where he halts and stands, eyes drifting across the field where Steve will plant clover and wheat in under a month’s time from now. Steve follows him, stopping at his side.

“Okay,” Bucky laughs suddenly, looking halfway hysterical with the way he’s grinning ear-to-ear like he doesn’t know what to do with his joy. “Okay… _yeah_. Where the hell else am I gonna go?”

Steve smiles back. He’s helpless not to, not when Bucky is turning to Steve and showing him how much those gray eyes can sparkle.

“Yes!” Bucky repeats, still laughing, fingers tangled in his own hair as the sunlight bounces bright off his long, soft locks. “ _Yes_ , and I—I want to see your wheat in the spring. I want to see it be green when it wakes up from the snow.”

“ _Our_ wheat, Buck,” and Steve is grinning wide despite the sweet hell he’s about to walk into. “And I think we’ll see it green. I think we’re gonna get our golden waves of grain, after all.”

Bucky chuckles, this time at Steve’s stupid joke, and Steve looks on. Steve watches.

He watches because he knows, here—in the last half of a summer full of death on the ground and new life falling from the sky—that there is nothing else in this world except Bucky Barnes’s smile.

* * *


	5. Chapter 5

* * *

**b u c k y**

s e p t e m b e r 1 5, 2 0 2 5

| 273 days until harvest |

Bucky has a bedroom now.

It isn’t Steve’s guestroom anymore, and Bucky isn’t staying in it just because Steve feels bad that he hit Bucky with his truck. Bucky has earned—is earning—a place to stay because he has a job that he knows he’s good at and that _Steve_ thinks he’s good at, good enough to want to offer Bucky a real job. Steve even thinks he’s good enough to pay him, and the payment… Jesus. Forget the room and board he’s providing; Steve—the idiot—is also paying him twice what Bucky’s father has made in any given year of his life. Steve had even taken Bucky to the bank to help him open a new checking account in his own name. Bucky gets his paychecks _direct deposit_.

Bucky has a bedroom, and he also has free use of the kitchen and the living room just like he always did, but it feels different now. It feels like Bucky is Steve’s roommate, his housemate. It feels like he’s really doing his part to chip in and earn his new, shockingly lucrative keep every time he makes scones. He’s even teaching Steve how to flavor different kinds of meat.

There’s the land outside—lifeless as it is—and there’s the house. All of it together is a home, and it’s Bucky’s home now.

It’s _his_. And it’s Steve’s.

The thing about Steve is that he looks at Bucky like Bucky has value; like he has worth. He looks at Bucky like he isn’t just taking up space in this world.

Steve _looks_ , and then suddenly, it’s like Bucky is someone worth looking at.

It had made Bucky uncomfortable at first, during those first few days spent on Steve’s sprawling farm. Not because of the fact that Steve was looking at him, not at all; the way those bright yet dark eyes seem to keep landing on Bucky actually makes him feel safe for the first time in… a long time, for the first time since he was kicked out of the house he grew up in, since he was abandoned to cold nights and wet dirt roads. No—it had been uncomfortable because it had made Bucky feel like an imposter, like if Steve felt like Bucky was worth so much as a glance, then it must have been because Bucky was lying to him in some way, pretending to be something more than he is.

But, eventually, Bucky had dared to let himself believe that maybe there actually could be something about him that might be worthy of those looks—at least, some of them. That maybe his Pops was wrong about him. Maybe he isn’t useless for dropping out of school, or maybe just the fact that Steve thinks he’s worth looking at somehow _makes_ Bucky worth all of that.

And Steve is looking at him like he’s worth it right now, hands on the wheel at a stoplight in town, glancing in his direction while he assesses the state of Bucky’s newly freed left arm.

“How’s it feel?” Steve asks.

Bucky continues his careful attempts at straightening his arm out, but he knows it will be some time before he can extend it in full after eight weeks of immobilizing his elbow.

“Okay. Weird. I got so used to that splint.”

The light turns green, and Steve steps off the brake and eases onto the gas.

“At least the surgical site looks good. I don’t think you’ll scar much.”

Steve is right. The doctor at the hospital in Columbus had taken out his stitches that morning and checked out Bucky’s arm with a new set of x-rays, and he’d eventually declared that Bucky was free and clear so long as he works on his physical therapy at home to get his arm back to its normal function. Steve had looked on attentively while the doctor showed Bucky a few exercises he can do to restore the length of his tendons and the strength of the muscles in his hand. Bucky could tell that Steve had been watching and taking careful mental notes.

“Yeah, it’s good,” Bucky agrees. “That scar cream—or whatever it was—should help.”

Steve looks at Bucky like Bucky has value, like he has worth. He _watches_ Bucky—and really, that’s the whole damn thing of it:

Bucky’s been watching Steve watch him for two months now.

And now, Bucky has a home with him.

—

“Shit.”

Steve lets gravity carry the wrench to the floor, neck sagging, defeated, the hood of the tractor propped up far above his head. No matter how much Bucky watches him tighten the belt, the damn machine just won’t seem to turn on.

“I, um,” Bucky starts, more nervous than he usually is at his job these days, but only because he knows absolutely nothing about tractors—except for what they can do. “I saw on YouTube that sometimes this brand has troubles with the spark plug. Could that be it?”

Steve looks up at him that way he sometimes does when Bucky offers an explanation that both surprises him and seems to make sense; appreciative. He nods.

“Yeah,” Steve sighs. “I was thinking the same. Can’t fix that here. If I take it in today, we might be able to get it taken care of in time for next week.” He wipes his hand on the rag before climbing down and running his fingers through his hair, looking at Bucky. “Would you call ahead to the shop and tell Cindy I can tow it up, have it there in about an hour?”

Bucky nods. He has Cindy on speed dial on the new smartphone Steve had given him—his ‘signing bonus,’ of course.

“Yeah, sure.”

He’s about to walk away to grab his phone from inside the house when Steve speaks again.

“Damn it,” he mutters, and Bucky can tell he’s mostly swearing to himself. He’s crouched down on the barn floor now, trying to restore one of the sections he’d all but torn apart trying to find the source of the tractor’s issue. “I can’t find the five-eighths hex again.”

Bucky pauses, because he remembers seeing that bolt socket only a moment ago. He walks to the workbench and quickly finds it.

“Here you go,” he says with an easy shrug, moving to Steve and handing it down. “It was just over on the bench.”

Steve peers up, but instead of taking the metal piece from Bucky’s hand, he pauses. It feels like he’s examining him, not like he’s surprised—he wouldn’t be, not when he knows how well Bucky has learned his way around the power tool set-up—but like he’s trying to sort out a thought that’s very important but also very far away, secured inside hidden places within his mind.

A tendril of hair falls across Steve’s grease-streaked forehead like it always does when Steve is working on the tractor. Bucky, as usual, has to drive down the impulse to reach out and brush it back.

Steve nods up at him, once, and his mouth shapes itself into half of a fond, warm smile.

“Thank you, sweetheart.”

Bucky’s air stops in his throat and kisses the top of his mouth.

It’s new, but it’s not. Steve has never called him that before, and yet—with a sensation like tripping and falling but being carefully caught—Bucky realizes it doesn’t feel like the first time at all. He sucks in a quiet breath to recover the one he’d lost, and it’s a long, long time before he manages to let it go. He’s dizzy by the time he does.

_Sweetheart._

“I—Um, yeah,” Bucky mumbles, quick and quiet, stumbling. He can feel the blush heating his cheeks, but he can’t tear his eyes away from Steve’s. He’s locked in. “Any… Anytime.”

Their eyes don’t break from each other’s when Steve accepts the tool from Bucky’s hand, not even when their hands brush, calloused fingertips slipping against the softer skin of Bucky’s knuckles. Steve’s mouth is full-looking and closed, but Bucky knows his own lips are parted.

Steve looks at Bucky like Bucky has value—but the truth is that Bucky also knows how Steve looks at him while he’s baking. He sees the way Steve’s eyes linger on his face when he passes Steve a batter-soaked mixing spoon for tasting, days when Bucky wants to whip up something sweet between episodes of tractors breaking. He feels the way Steve’s gaze warms the surface of his skin when Bucky is just lying on the couch, carefully thumbing through an old sketchbook of still-life subjects that Steve somehow trusts Bucky enough to show him.

And he sees how Steve looks away every time Bucky looks back—but not right now.

No, Steve still isn’t looking away right now. He keeps holding Bucky’s gaze even once he’s got the hex bit in his grip, and his eyes are intense, but not in the smoky, smoldering way they get when Bucky’s facing away and those two blue circles burn iris-sized holes into his back. It’s a different kind of intensity. Bucky’s not sure it’s purposeful, or if it’s even entirely directed at him. But _damn_ , does he feel it.

It’s almost sudden when Steve finally breaks the moment. He diverts his eyes, expertly installing the extension on the impact drill. Bucky hears the sound of it clicking into place.

“Better go ring her,” Steve says after clearing his throat, mouth set in a straight line as he gets back to work. “Wanna catch her before she heads out to lunch.”

And now he’s avoiding Bucky’s face completely, but maybe that’s a good thing; Bucky doesn’t know if he could do all of that again, not with his chest as tight as it is and his heart thrumming as fast as a rabbit’s.

“Yeah. I’ll—I’ll do that now.”

The outdoor country air is welcome when Bucky finally exits the barn, letting it fill up his empty, burning lungs.

Two months. Two months of waking up to Steve making him breakfast, as though giving him a roof over his head isn’t hospitality enough. Two months of Bucky having to bite down on his own lip to keep from making embarrassing noises when he watches Steve’s blue jeans slide a little too low down his narrow hips. Two months of opening the dresser in Steve’s guest room—Bucky’s room—and mysteriously finding even more new clothes in his size.

And two months of wondering if Steve might want Bucky the same way Bucky wants him.

—

Steve sticks to his plan, hitching up the tractor to his truck shortly thereafter. As it turns out, they’ve both got their separate reasons why Bucky should probably stay back at the house while Steve hauls the busted machine into town—

_“I need you to double-check the inoculants are ready to go for next—”_

_“—I’m gonna get a head start on dinner—oh, um. Yeah.”_

—so Bucky doesn’t go with him. He _does_ get started on dinner, and he _does_ call up the seed shop to make sure their clover inoculant order is still on its way, but it takes him less than ten minutes in all.

Steve is going to be gone for at least two hours, thank Christ. Bucky desperately needs the alone time.

His pants are on the floor before he even thinks to shut the bedroom door behind him. His briefs follow, and Bucky doesn’t bother to put his discarded clothes in the laundry basket, because he knows he’s going to put everything back on so that he’s dressed the same as he’d been when Steve left. He lands himself on his back at the center of the mattress, pressing his head back into the pillow.

He doesn’t waste a single second before wrapping his hand around his dick and giving it a long, slow tug.

Steve looks at Bucky like Bucky has value—worth, like Bucky is someone worth looking at—and _god,_ having any kind of attention from Steve Grant is… heady. It’s rich.

It’s absolutely intoxicating.

Bucky twists his wrist and lets out a sigh of relief. It’s not the first time he’s jacked off thinking about Steve, not even close; he couldn’t count those occasions if he tried. He’s twenty-five, and goddamn if his blood doesn’t run hot in his veins every hour of every day.

But it’s the first time he’s taken himself in hand and set out with thoughts that go further than just the long, strong lines of Steve’s body—and _Lord_ , is that man a sight to behold. Bucky loves the way that those long, thick fingers look wrapped around the handle of an axe as Steve chops winter firewood with all the mysterious ease of slicing butter. He loves the way sweat makes the dark bronze hair peeking out above Steve’s collar stick to his skin. He loves the way those impossible muscles shift and move beneath the sun-kissed skin of Steve’s biceps on days when it’s far too hot out to be moving bags of seed with more covering him than jeans and a white t-shirt. He loves the way Steve runs his own calloused fingertips through his thick beard whenever he’s lost in thought… Or whenever he’s lost in watching Bucky. Again.

 _Fuck_ , but his dick is leaking already.

Bucky knows that he is young—compared to Steve, at least—and that his experience with men was cut short before it ever had the chance to become much of… well, anything. Steve is so big and broad and just fucking _masculine_ , and Bucky wonders if Steve would find his naked body too thin, too awkward, too short. He wonders if Steve would strip him down and think that Bucky’s body isn’t what a man’s should be, or if it’s too much like a boy’s, even if Bucky is proud of his own thick thighs and his shoulders and the bit of chest hair he’s managed to grow. He even thinks he has a good-looking dick, too. He thinks it’s pretty big.

But the truth is that Bucky doesn’t mind feeling small when Steve is so big. Bucky is young and inexperienced, sure, but he’s a man with needs and they have gone unfulfilled and his body is _screaming_ at him—and there is so, so much that Steve could do to him with that big body of his.

_“Thank you, sweetheart.”_

Bucky would smother his own groan if he didn’t know Steve wasn’t home. He tightens his grip around his cock and feels the muscles surrounding his spine undulate in response.

_Fuck._

He may have jerked off to thoughts of Steve more times than he can count, but right now it feels different. It’s not just the way Steve looks with a smudge of grease on his forehead, and it’s not just the size of Steve’s strong hands. It’s not even the way his mouth looks red and spit-slick when Steve’s been thinking, staring, licking at it.

No—it’s the things Steve would _say_ with that red, spit-slick mouth.

_“Thank you, sweetheart.”_

It’s the things he might do. It’s the way that Steve’s eyes had flashed with heat when Bucky blushed back, the way that Steve had seemed to hear his own words a few seconds too late.

Steve had never meant to say it. It all just slipped out.

It only makes everything _hotter_.

Bucky pumps his hand faster over his dry cock and hisses at the wrong kind of sensation. It’s hard, but he forces himself to stop just long enough to retrieve the brand new bottle of cocoa butter Steve had tossed in the cart at the store last week— _“helps with the scarring, Buck”_ —and lays back down on the bed, slick hand at the ready. He can go faster this way, so he does, pumping himself up and down and thinking, _thinking_ , imagining the things he wishes he knew or—no, things he needs to know.

Bucky needs so much.

He needs to know what it would be like to have Steve undress him. He needs to know what Steve would do as he watched each new inch of skin be revealed, needs to know how much he’d have to fight his own inevitable blush when Steve stares at him with the same intensity that Steve always does, burning and blue. He needs to know what a cock—what _Steve’s_ cock—would taste like on Bucky’s tongue, if it would be salty or sweet or musky. He needs to know if he could be… be _good_ for Steve, if he could swallow him down into his throat and maybe even do it without gagging. Bucky needs to finally feel what it’s like to have his body wrecked by another man, no—

_“Thank you, sweetheart.”_

—no, Bucky needs to know what it feels like to have his body wrecked by _Steve._

Steve is so fucking strong, and Bucky knows already he could rail him straight through the mattress. If nothing else, Bucky needs just to know what it feels like to get _fucked_ , to be held down and covered with heat and owned, to feel like he was made for Steve to keep his cock inside. He needs to know if Steve would go hard and fast or gentle and slow, if he would pet Bucky’s hair and call him sweet, special names if Bucky got nervous and needed reassurance, if Steve would—

_“Thank you, sweetheart.”_

—if Steve would fuck him and look at him the same way he had this afternoon.

This afternoon... _Jesus_. Bucky squeezes his eyes tight and tries to imagine it again, but this time, the two of them are in an entirely different place. They’re not amongst tractors and workbenches, but soft sheets instead, and there is linen tangling around Bucky’s limbs, flesh twisting in the fabric as Steve’s hands hold him and caress him, lips kissing across Bucky’s skin.

Then that _voice_. Steve’s voice, slithering its way into Bucky’s heat with old words and new words and words that come from nowhere but a void and—

**(“Do you like the way this feels, sweetheart?”)**

_Sweetheart._

Bucky tries to choke off his moan even when he doesn’t need to. He’s not sure he succeeds.

There’s nothing for it at this point; Bucky squeezes his dick faster than is comfortable because he can’t help it anymore, he can’t, and he’s alone in the house so he doesn’t even have to.

What if… What if Steve put Bucky in his mouth? What if—oh no, oh _no_ —what if Steve—

**(“Try to hold still, baby. I wanna open your body up on my tongue.”)**

—and no no _no_ he’s going to come too fast like this with that voice in his head, he doesn’t want it to be over, _no_ , not when there’s so much more that could happen inside his head, so much more that Steve could _do_ and that Steve could _say_ to him in the perfect, uncharted world of his fantasies.

Steve could call him other nice things. He could take a full dinner plate from Bucky’s hands and lean in to kiss him on the cheek, and then he could whisper, _“This looks amazing, honey,”_ or, _“Oh, baby, smells just as delicious as you.”_

…But what if it wasn’t just Bucky that Steve had names for that meant special things, sweet things— _“sweetheart”_ —but what if Steve also had names to refer to himself?

And what if Steve wanted _Bucky_ to use those names, too? What if—what if—?

**(“Do you want that? Do you want _Daddy’s_ tongue in you?”)**

_“Oh—!”_

Bucky bites down on his bottom lip so hard that it bleeds.

There’s red, but he’ll wipe it away later.

He’s never been this hard in his life—he’s never thought… _that_ in his life. His dick hurts. He wants to come but he also doesn’t because it feels like there are a thousand years of unexplored opportunities under the squeeze of his hand, and Bucky just wants a tiny, tiny taste of it, he wants—he wants more. He doesn’t want to come all over his wrist just yet. He wants to be good, if not for Steve then for himself, good enough to drag his own pleasure out.

**(“On your belly, Buck.”)**

“Fuck.”

Bucky flips himself over just because—well, no he’s not going to… oh, but god is he—?

He _is_.

He’s gonna do it. He’s going to take this fucking pillow, and he’s gonna stuff it under his hips, and he’s going to make himself feel good while doing something he hasn’t done since he was a goddamn preteen, since he first discovered his own cock.

**(“Oh, no, perfect boy… Are you really that desperate for my come?”)**

It should feel shameful with just how much the fabric is like sweet, slow heaven against his leaking dick, except Bucky has no choice but to forgo the very concept of shame. He gives into it, thrusting his hips forward over and over and over, humping a fucking pillow.

It feels like porn playing inside his head, playing out in this bedroom he’s earned for himself. It feels like he’s a cam boy and Steve is somewhere out there watching him— _watching_ him, just like he always does—telling him to fuck his pillow and laying on the heavy names.

**(“Oh, honey… So desperate that you’ll put your gorgeous face down and your pretty ass up? So I can put my mouth and hand on you at the same time?”)**

And Bucky can’t. He can’t fuck his hips any way but fast when his head is filled with images of Steve licking his dick—licking him _out_ , and Bucky doesn’t even know what that feels like, but he knows it must feel good. It must feel like rapture to have Steve’s tongue push inside his ass and eat him out like a girl and—oh, Jesus, does Steve eat out girls?

**(“So damn _sweet_ for me, baby.”)**

Does Steve fuck all kinds of people? He says he’s been around. Has Steve had so much sex that he’d know exactly how to make Bucky feel good, how to make him _scream_ …

…Even when Bucky himself wouldn’t know how to take a dick if he tried?

**(“There you go, just like that, push back on my hand— _Yeah_. You’re so beautiful for me.”)**

And, oh. Maybe that’s something. Fuck. Steve already knows he’s a virgin—a stupid, twenty-five-year-old virgin—thanks to that third beer. Maybe Steve would like him more if he knew Bucky was experienced enough, if he knew how to open his body up for him, but he’s, just… he’s not. He doesn’t.

Maybe Steve would want him to say he’s taken something real up his ass and not have to lie about the answer.

**(“Is this tight hole ready for me?”)**

Alright. Bucky can do this.

He can.

Bucky grabs a second pillow, stuffing it beneath his hips along with the first to build himself more height. He reaches for the discarded cocoa butter, squirting out just enough to coat two fingers, because he’s gonna _do_ it this time. He’s had a finger inside himself before, but only on a couple occasions. This time, he’s not going to chicken out like he did every other time he’s tried to add a second. He’s gonna stretch himself open like Steve would if he were here and if Bucky were being good for him.

He humps against the new pillow while he reaches his better arm back, rubbing the lotion up and down between his cheeks to get himself slick.

…What other kinds of things would Steve say?

**(“What a good boy, Bucky, letting Daddy’s fingers inside like this.”)**

Bucky’s breath hitches as he touches his hole with one fingertip, and he can feel himself clenching up against it. He’s nervous, which is dumb, because he’s definitely done this part before. Maybe it just feels different when he knows he’s doing it because he wants to imagine being good enough to take Steve’s cock.

**(“No, no, sweetheart. Don’t tighten up. You were doing so _good_ for Daddy.”)**

He nods at the voice in his head as though it’s speaking right into his ear, and he takes a big breath in. On the exhale, he pushes his finger in and gasps sharply as it slips past the rim, and fuck fuck _fuck_ that actually feels pretty good, but oh, no, his finger escapes for a minute when his hips get too excited, thrusting forward too far into his pillow.

**(“Oh, Buck. Are we making your little dick happy? That’s okay, that’s just fine. We want you to feel good.”)**

Bucky bites his sore lip and works his finger back inside, and he’s brave enough to take it down to the second knuckle this time, hoping that will make it easier to keep it in. He knows from watching porn that there are some angles that are supposed to be better than others, and he’s pretty sure this isn’t one of the good ones, but he’s also too weak to give up the friction teasing his weeping, hard cock.

**(“In and out, sweet boy. In and out, easy, just like this. Just opening you up and making it nice.”)**

And yeah, it does feel nice— _really_ nice. Maybe there’s a better angle out there somewhere, but he’s pumping his finger in and out and the stretch alone is worth everything he’s giving himself.

Bucky’s ready; Bucky’s... loose? Maybe. He’s still only at the second knuckle, but that’s okay. He can take things deeper some other time. Right now, Bucky’s feeling like he needs to take more, to be wider.

**(“What do you think, sweetheart? Two fingers next to Daddy’s tongue?”)**

_“Yes,”_ Bucky whispers to the voice in his head, yet to no one but himself. “Yes, Daddy. _Please_.”

Bucky swipes the next finger through the lotion on his taint and tries to squeeze it in next to the first. It immediately hurts. Maybe if he…? But fuck, _no_ , no that way feels even worse.

**(“You’re just taking me so well, aren’t you? This sweet hole, sucking me in… So greedy.”)**

He groans out his frustration, but the sound is smothered by the pillowcase.

He’s _not_ —he’s not good enough to take Steve like he should. He’s too… whatever. He’s clenching too much, he’s too nervous. It’s just as well that he’s made it to his mid-twenties still being a virgin; it doesn’t feel like he’d be able to make it happen if the opportunity came along.

**(“Oh, Bucky. Look at that—yeah? Two whole fingers… Looks like you’re good and ready to take Daddy’s cock.”)**

Bucky whines into the wet puddle of drool he’s left on the pillow. If he could do it—if he could learn to take it, really take it—what would it be like? At this rate, he’s not sure if he’s ever going to get to find out.

And with Steve, with _Steve_ —just Steve. How would Steve fuck him? Would he be a silent, sheer, raging power in bed? Would he fuck Bucky hard enough to make him whimper and shout, to make him come, to make him mess up both his and Steve’s stomachs in stripes of white?

He wonders if Steve would stop after that. Maybe he wouldn’t.

Maybe Steve would make Bucky come and keep _going_.

**(“Bucky, baby, hold yourself still. Daddy’s almost done with you.”)**

Would he hold Bucky down and pin him there while he has his way with him?

**(“So close, sweetheart, _so_ fucking close.”)**

Bucky knows there are different things Steve could do to him when he comes. Would he pull out, spill all over Bucky’s stomach? Would he be so helpless to stop the movement of his hips that he just spills right into the condom? Or would he do what they do in that crazy kind of porn where everyone’s so clean that they don’t even use condoms—spilling his come up inside Bucky like that’s—fuck—

—Like that’s what Bucky is _for_.

**(“There you go, yeah— _yeah_ , just for me, just for _Daddy_. Be sweet…”)**

Bucky wants to be that for Steve, he wants to be good. He wants to be the one that Steve holds down while he lets himself go and just does what he wants long enough and hard enough to make himself _come_. Bucky wants to be sweet and hot, even tight, and he wants to be receptive just like this pillow is being for him right now, except he wants to be something—someone—that Steve can kiss while he fucks.

His dick pulses hot against the pillow.

**(“Oh, sweet boy—you too, huh? Gonna spill all over us?”)**

“Yeah, _yeah_ Daddy, gonna come, gonna—”

**(“—Then come with Daddy, c’mon. Come while your Daddy fills you up.”)**

“Fuck, _fuck_ —!”

Bucky comes with the pillowcase rubbing over his dick, the tips of two fingers burning and struggling to stay inside, and the fantasy of Steve’s voice growling dirty in his ear.

Time passes, or so it feels. He catches his breath and looks at the clock.

It’s been all of twenty minutes since he took off his pants. Steve’s still gone for at least the next hour and a half, and oh, yeah… Bucky’s _sure_ that Steve would want a man who comes as fast as a teenager anytime he gets to humping a goddamn pillow. He wipes his hand off on the soiled pillowcase, not willing to find a towel or sock to get just as filthy as the poor thing he’s already dirtied up.

He keeps his mind quiet for as long as he can, not allowing himself to think as he gathers up the pillowcases and any dirty towels he can find to run a load of laundry before Steve gets home. He keeps his mind quiet because what he’s just shot off to is something new and kind of weird to him, something that’s a lot to take in without, well.

So maybe his mind doesn’t stay quiet.

It’s not that he hasn’t thought of it before—“Daddy.” It’s just something that always existed in porn. It’s a fantasy that people only play out in sex clubs, where everyone probably has names for each other; “Sir,” “Master,” “Daddy.” Boy.

Does Bucky want to be Steve’s… _boy_?

He busies himself with dinner and finishing the laundry for the next hour and a half. His pillowcases are already back on his bed, clean, and there’s a big pot of summer squash soup simmering on the stove by the time Steve returns.

“Hey,” Bucky says softly, setting the bread on the pan to bake and trying not to blush like Steve… _knows_. “How’d it go?”

Steve strides into the kitchen. He looks Bucky’s way and nods.

“Good. She’s got a slot open to work on it this week. We’ll have it in time to put down the clover.”

It doesn’t feel as awkward between them as it had before Steve left for town. Bucky wonders if Steve has forgotten already, if it’s just Bucky that recalls the sound of that sweet pet name rolling off Steve’s tongue. He wonders if the whole thing was one big mistake for Steve, if there was instant regret, if he doesn’t have a care in the world as to whether Bucky can be _good_ for him so long as he keeps being good at his job.

“Oh, good,” Bucky says, because he’s got nothing else on his mind he can say. “That’s good.”

Steve makes his way to the stove and catches a waft of the soup, humming. He picks up the utensil from the spoon rest, dipping it into the pot and bringing it up to his mouth for a taste.

“Mm,” Steve groans. “ _This_ is good, Buck.”

And then Steve sets down the spoon and looks at him, easy at first, but it quickly becomes the second time that day that he’s given Bucky eyes that smoke white and dark blue.

Maybe, yeah. Maybe Bucky can be good.

Maybe Steve even wants him to.

* * *

s e p t e m b e r 2 2, 2 0 2 5

| summer’s end |

“Ready, Buck?”

It’s early in the morning, and the sun is still spilling gold over the eastern horizon, light that would glitter before Bucky if not for the dullness of fresh grease coating different parts of the tractor. The colors brighten the white clouds drifting over their heads.

Steve’s forty acres sprawl bare before them. The millet is gone; rolled into hay, no longer another sign of death hanging over their heads. Now, there is only a field of run-down dirt that is far too light in tone, not rich enough, not dark enough. It doesn’t have what it needs to grow food for a table, not yet—but there’s a brand-new seed hopper attached to Steve’s tractor, full of tiny, toffee-colored kernels that will one day sprout green and crimson. It’s full of hope, maybe even life.

“Ready.”

Steve smiles, one hand in front of his face to shield his eyes from the rising sun. He holds his other long arm out, reaching down from the tractor seat, the broadness of his palm open to the sky. Bucky knows it’s an invitation. It serves no other purpose than to welcome his partnership in this, in more things. In whatever comes next.

Bucky breaks out into a smile of his own, and he reaches out his hand, closing his palm over Steve’s and feeling how small it is inside; so kept. It fits into place like a key in a lock.

“Alright. Here we go.”

Something unforeseen rumbles across the distance to the west, turning both of their necks towards a different horizon. The clouds grow darker overhead in that beautiful way that rain clouds tend to do.

And water—like it’s life—drizzles down from the sky in nothing more than a mist. Bucky’s eyebrows come together, but Steve…

Steve _laughs_. His smile splits his face, all white teeth and pink gums, the brightness of it shining down at Bucky even when Steve is facing the changing atmosphere above.

“I’m starting to think that you bring the rain with you, Bucky Barnes.”

Wind comes, too. It kicks up what little is left of the hay before the rain from the growing gray above comes, pinning dust back to the ground.

Bucky looks at the sight, and then raises his eyes. Steve is looking down at him.

He nods. The engine starts, and gears whir, loading up novel kernels of color and growth and a shared dream.

The tractor’s wheels turn.

Bucky is ready for it.

| _end of story_ **t w o** |

* * *

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You may now proceed to story **t h r e e** | _[The Seed and the Root](https://archiveofourown.org/works/28775313/chapters/70563408)_ |

**Author's Note:**

> Your comments and kudos and shares [ [tumblr](https://the1918.tumblr.com/post/638392416048693248/the-farmer-daddy-steve-and-bucky-au-series-by) / [twitter](https://twitter.com/the1918Lynne/status/1348019180533112836?s=20) ] water farmer Steve's crops ❤
> 
> Thank you again to [ixalit](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ixalit) for beta and to Cera ([@ceratonia-siliqua](https://ceratonia-siliqua.tumblr.com/) or [Leopardtail](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Leopardtail) on Ao3) for additional sensitivity reading. Also thank you to [Becassine](https://archiveofourown.org/users/becassine) and all of the Shrunkyclunks BitchesTM for providing support and the always necessary hype.


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